Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 3:4

"For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim:" — Hosea 3:4 (ASV)

The prophet suddenly passes from his personal history to that of Israel, which it symbolized.

Without a king... — The isolation of Gomer’s position prefigured that of Israel in the exile. Her bitter experience was a parable of Israel’s utter deprivation of all civil and religious privilege. There was to be no king, or prince, or sacred ritual of any kind.

Observe that terms from both forms of worship are here intermingled, suggesting the idolatrous conceptions of the pure ancient practice which Jeroboam’s calf-worship was all too likely to introduce.

By “image” we are to understand upright stones, representing Baal or the sun-god (Compare to Hosea 10:1 and Exodus 24:4).

On “ephod,” see Judges 17:5; Judges 18:14; Judges 18:17–20. Regarding “teraphim,” see Genesis 31:19-35; 1 Samuel 19:13–16; Ezekiel 21:21; Zechariah 10:2. In the latter two passages, the word is translated “idols” or “images,” and their use as instruments of divination is condemned.