This is almost certainly an allusion to when God called Israel out of Egypt and the nation was constituted. This was a reminder of God’s loving rescue.1 For he did not only bring them out of Egypt, he also sustained them in the wilderness, before giving them the Promised Land. This was not a period of absolute obedience (Numbers 14:1–45; Deuteronomy 1:1 – 3:29). However, relative to their current devotion to the Baals, syncretistic worship, and search for security through foreign alliances, the exodus represents a time when Israel trusted in God.
Taken together, the wilderness
(Hosea 2:14) and Egypt
(Hosea 2:15) are places or events where Moses mediated God’s covenant to Israel and where God sustained Israel for years before bringing them to the land of promise.
2 While it was a place of covenant making and divine guidance, it was also the place of marital beginnings.
15 And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.