Hosea 2:6-7, “Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.”
It would seem that—at times—the Lord graciously makes idolatrous pursuits to be a tortuous experience for His people precisely so that they will turn from straining after a lesser good and return to Him. Suffering, confusion, and exhaustion in the pursuit of something we think will satisfy us may be the mercifully merciless opposition of the Lord, preventing us from self-destruction and driving us back to Him who in whose presence is fullness of joy (Ps.16:11).