Book of Hosea Chapter 3 Vs. 4

 Hosea Redeems His Wife

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Hos. 3:4

the children of... All this has been literally true for many centuries. From 606 B.C. until today they have not had a king or a prince. They did return from Babylon and renew the sacrifices, but since 70 A.D. they have not even had this. They have been without images and teraphim all these years so the prophecy has been literally fulfilled.

without an ephod... Idolatrous items of priestly clothing and objects of worship (idols in this case).

They have been stripped from all privileges of worship, as the harlot had been stripped of contact with her lovers. In the king and prince, we see they are stripped of their civil authority. All forms of religion had been stripped, as well. The image is representing the worship of false gods. The ephod was worn by the High Priest, and was their connection to God. God spoke to the people through the Urim and Thummim of the ephod of the High Priest. Soothsaying was done through the teraphim.

The Illustration Explained

Gomer’s lengthy period of isolation was designed to portray Israel’s exile, when the nation would be separated from its illicit institutions and practices (cf. Hos. 2:6-7). The absence of king and prince implied loss of national sovereignty. The elimination of sacrifice and sacred stones meant the cessation of formal religious activity. Sacrifices, having been commanded by the Lord, were a legitimate aspect of worship when offered with an attitude of total devotion to God. However, in Israel sacrifices had become contaminated by their association with Baal worship (cf. Hos. 4:19) and by the people’s failure to obey “the more important matters of the Law” (Mat. 23:23; cf. Hos. 6:6; 8:11-13). “Sacred stones” (maṣṣēḇâh) had been a legitimate part of patriarchal worship (cf. Gen. 28:18, 28:22; 31:13). However, because of those stones’ association with pagan religion, Israel was forbidden to use them after entering Canaan (Lev. 26:1; Deut. 16:22). In direct violation of this covenant stipulation Israel had erected such stones as part of its Baal worship (2Kgs. 3:2; 10:26-27; 17:10; Hos. 10:1; Mic. 5:13).

Ephod and idol refer to methods of divination. In this context the ephod was not the garment worn by a priest, but a cultic object (cf. Jdg. 8:27 and Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. 2 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965, 2:350). Idols (t^erāp̱ı̂m), sometimes found in homes (Gen. 31:19; 1Sam. 19:13, 19:16) or in a king’s collection of divination devices (Eze. 21:21), were despised by the Lord (1Sam. 15:23; 2Kgs. 23:24). These two items (ephod and idol) are also mentioned together in Judges (Jdg. 17:5; 18:14, 18:17-18, 18:20) as part of the belongings of an Ephraimite’s personal priest. These instruments of divination were confiscated by the Danites and used in their unauthorized worship system (Jdg. 18:27-31).