This was my point. Yizreel. YHWH scatters and YHWH harvests, or gathers. He knows where His people are, even if they don't know. Though it was prophecied they would forget and lose their identity, it was also prophecied they would remember.
Is Yizreel the place His people would be sown, or is it the place they will be gathered?
You are correct, they were sent off, they did forget, and they did lose their identity. For many centuries they had their own Temple of Baal apart from Judah. They became everything that Judah wasn't.
Two nations living side by side having two separate religions, two separate Temples, two separate sets of Sabbaths and Holy days. Two separate Priesthoods.
Ephraim died before he ever left because he set up his own Temple to Baal and rejected his God throughout the entire 700 years of his Kingdom.
Hosea 13: When Ephraim spoke trembling. He exalted himself in Israel; But when he offended in Baal, he died.
You are correct in saying that they forgot and lost their identity and don't even know who they are themselves{I would say Gentile Christians}.
You are correct because God tells us this would happen over and over.
Hosea 9:16 Ephraim is stricken Their root is dried up; They shall bear no fruit, Yes, were they to bear children, I would kill the beloved fruit of the womb.''
My God will cast them away, Because they did not obey him; And they shall be wanderers among the nations.
They lost their identity centuries before they were sent into the nations But there is such great hope for these people who God had said,'' You are not my people.''
THEY WILL REMEMBER!
THEY WILL MAKE Themselves ready to be bound to Judah because they are for Judah and they will far out number Judah many times over.
But what sort of wife should be bound to Judah?
What sort of people are to become one with the Jews?
Malachi 2:10
10 Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?
11 Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. 12 As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.
13 Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 14 You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
Jesus says this to the Pharisees who loved money more than their position of being a light to the nations of gentiles.
Luke 16:
16 “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it. 17 It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.
18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.''
They divorced their position as a husband and their duty to be a light to the gentile nations and so Lazarus{Which means Eleazer the son of Aaron}.
Lazarus or Eleazer symbolizes the priesthood that languished, the position left neglected and the dogs{ gentiles} licked upon the sores{illness of the position}.
The son of Aaron and the priesthood was to be a light for all nations and they were to love their position as taking on wives for God and binding the gentile to the Jew, but they loved money more than they loved their wives and so they divorced their wife, because they loved another woman{money}.
Jesus comes as the Messenger of the Covenant--
I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.
Jesus comes with a covenant in his hand ready to perform a service of Marriage, to bind one people to another people, and there stands Judah.
But where is Judah's wife that Elijah and John went to prepare?
There was a need for John to come because Judah was not looking to redeem a wife, But Jesus himself came and as a Jew, he would redeem her himself, even the messenger of the covenant, He would be their light when no light was found in Judah that the gentiles flocked too.
The Messenger of the covenant comes to Judah to be king of two peoples, to bind those people together in a covenant.
But what did the Jews say?
They said,'' You are not our king, and they are not our wife.''
Although hoards of Gentiles followed him who were willing to come into the covenant, How could the covenant be made if Judah rejects the messenger of the covenant and his role to be a light to the gentile?
Nevertheless, Jesus would be a Jew who would betroth them to himself because the Pharisees loved money more than they loved their role as a husband who would be joined in a covenant with their bride.
In him they become one body in that two peoples were joined together as man and wife and Jesus stood between them and bound the whole creation as one, as Body, soul, and spirit.
Now I would tell you that I am a gentile who kept the traditions and ways of Baal for the first 35 years of my life but I REMEMBERED!
Although I made up my mind to never be associated with any Pagan God and lost my wife because of it, I Remembered and returned.
Even though I became an outcast of my own family because I remembered and turned back to God, I stand fast in my patience and loyalty to the Jews who will still not accept me.
But it doesn't matter if the Jews do not want me, because I have already been redeemed by a Jew and I have a promise of Marriage to a Jew who did accept me and a promise from a Jew to become his child in which Jesus says,'' Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me.'' Isaiah 8:18
Isaiah 9:1 Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her{Israel} who is distressed, as when at first he lightly esteemed The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her{ended her kingdom}, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, In Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light;
Those who dwelled in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shine. {Ephraim's land} YOU HAVE multiplied the nation.
