The church is the vehicle to “raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel” (Isaiah 49:6). The text has it that the “Servant” accomplishes this but since Christ is the head of the church it follows that the Servant personifies the church just as he personifies Israel. There is no conflict with the texts you pose when Ephraim is recognized as the “the tribes of Jacob,” as opposed to Judah. Hosea 2 prophesies that Ephraim, the ten northern tribes, will be allured into the wilderness and there the relationship with their prior husband will be restored and be “betrothed” to him, and then he “will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to
them which were not my people, Thou
art my people; and they shall say,
Thou art my God.” This is also what 1 Peter 2:10 affirms.
Yet, Deuteronomy 24:4 impedes Hosea’s prophecy.
Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 24:4)
The prophets also affirmed this impediment.
Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away. (Isaiah 50:1)
They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord. (Jeremiah 3:1)
Paul reveals the principle that satisfies the law.
Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. (Romans 7:1–4)
Dispensationalists are ignorant of the issue that pre-incarnate Christ was the person who gave the covenant to Israel and it was to him that they were married and were released by Christ’s sacrifice.
And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. (Judges 2:1)
Christ’s death released Ephraim (and Judah) from the law and the marriage under the Old Covenant but only Ephraim is betrothed to him and sown in the world, which is part of the source of the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13. Now read my post #
126.