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According to this promise of good things, God again gives the Prophet a command about his wife, to love the fornicator and the one who lives wickedly, so that by his very deed he will again present the image of God’s love for the unworthy. For he says: Os.3:1. Just as God loves the sons of Israel, these look to the gods of strangers and love stews with currants. It was the custom of those devoted to idols to prepare something similar to this. The prophet immediately carries out the commandment and recounts what reward he promises his wife and what conditions he has made with her. For he says: “I commanded her” to avoid all alien communication and to preserve herself inviolably for me. The symbol also indicates what is being represented. Hos.3:4. For many days the children of Israel will sit; I am not the king, nor the prince, nor the sacrifice, nor the altar, nor the priesthood, nor the manifestation. Like a fornicator, having abandoned her former lusts, she chose cohabitation with the Prophet; So you, taken captives to a foreign land, will have neither royal nor priestly care for you. For what kind of worship can there be if there is no altar? And what is usually announced and explained by priests or prophets will not be announced to those who want to find out in a foreign country what they should do. And I will not clearly show My care for them, with all the fervor of My affection for them for the sake of their fathers. That is why the Prophet, although he lived with his vicious wife, as was commanded, nevertheless refrained from marital intercourse; because the God of all things did not completely deprive the people of His care for them, but did not make it obvious and open. The Prophet called God's predictions “appearances”; because the bishop, with the word of judgment, accepted “the appearance and the truth” (Lev. 8:8), and according to certain signs that happened to him, he foretold the future. That is why the great Moses, blessing the priestly tribe, said: “Give to Levi what was revealed” (Deut. 33:8). Thus, having foreshadowed the sorrowful, he mixes in the joyful things. For he says: Hos.3:5. Therefore the children of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and will wonder about the Lord and about His goodness in the last days. For the ten tribes, who rebelled against the kings, the descendants of David, set up their own king, but upon returning from Babylon, having united and formed a single people, they had one leader, Zerubbabel, who came from the tribe of David, and with him they enjoyed God-given blessings. Knowing all this clearly before it was fulfilled, the Lord foretells it with a prophetic voice. The words: “in the last days” mean: after the end of seventy years of captivity.