That's actually a really interesting theological question. I don't know that I ever noticed that passage before. It doesn't seem to be addressed again, to give any perspective.
Hosea kept taking his wife Gomer back, but she wasn't actually marrying other men in between reconciliations. She just strayed. David took back his wife Michal, who did remarry, but it wasn't David who gave her a divorce; Saul took that liberty to marry her off again. Perhaps it was addressing spousal swapping, as another poster suggested. I wouldn't put it past a legalistic group to go through that charade of marriage/divorce/remarriage to assign some legitimacy to their calculated debauchery. Which would be an abomination.
I've known couples who did separate and go on to have other relationships, but ultimately reunited. But I can't say I know of a single couple who actually married in the first place, divorced and remarried other people, and then came back and actually remarried each other. It was always a high school sweetheart with whom they failed to tie the knot the first time, otherwise the intermediate relationship never escalated to marriage. Although not technically a married-divorced-remarried-divorced-original-marriage scenario, these are always beautiful and seem to end well. It's as if the original couple just needed perspective. And then they thrived on their shared history. I do think there is something special about sharing one's youth. Young marriage gets a bad rap, but as a woman who did marry young, I see a lot of value in having your shared experiences during the formative years.
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