Hosea 3:1

Go yet, love Rather, Once more go love, indicating that the narrative dropped at Hosea 1:9 is now resumed. (Notice also in this connexion the change of the third person into the first in chap. 3) It is the same woman who is meant; otherwise a different form of expression would have been used (like that in Hosea 1:2), besides which the allegory would have been spoiled had there been two women concerned. Gomer is throughout the symbol of faithless but not forsaken Israel. The narrative is told in a condensed allusive style, which makes some demand on the imagination of the reader. If Gomer is to be taken back, it is clear that she must have left her husband, and the price at which (Hosea 3:2) she has to be brought back shews that she had fallen into depths of misery.

beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress Rather, beloved of a paramour, and an adulteress. As if Jehovah had said, Love her just as she is; the definition is added for the reader's sake, to show how great an act was demanded of Hosea, like -Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest" (Genesis 22:2). For the rendering -paramour", comp. Jeremiah 3:20; Lamentations 1:2.

who look Rather, whereas they (on their side) turn.

flagons of wine Rather, cakes of grapes. Cakes of dried grapes were common articles of food, mentioned with cakes of figs, bread, and wine, and parched corn (1 Samuel 25:18). The cakes here mentioned, however, must have been of a superior kind; they bear a different name, and appear from Isaiah 16:7 (corrected translation) to have been considered as luxuries. They formed part of David's royal bounty on the removal of the ark to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:19), or more correctly of the sacrificial feast implied by the context. This latter point is interesting as it suggests that Baal-worship was closely related to the festivities of the vintage (Prof. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 434). Hosea too seems to refer to these cakes in connexion with the sacrificial feasts, not without a touch of sarcasm.

I bought her to me Why Hosea had to buy his wife back from her paramour, does not appear; had he lost his rights over her by her flight and adultery? Perhaps it was simply to avoid an altercation with the adulterer, or we may imagine such a scene as is depicted by Dean Plumptre in his poem Gomer" (Lazarusp. 87). The view of Pococke and Pusey that Hosea means to explain how he undertook to allow his wife just sufficient for a decent maintenance till she should be reinstated in her full position, accounts no doubt for grain being given as well as money, but does violence to the letter of the text, as there is no sufficient proof of the rendering -I provided her with food".

for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half homer of barley In 2 Kings 7:18 two seahs of barley are rated at a shekel. This however was immediately after the siege of Samaria had been raised; the normal rate would probably have been lower, say three seahs at a shekel, so that a homer (30 seahs) would have cost ten shekels and a homer and a half fifteen. The total price paid by Hosea would therefore be thirty shekels (about £3. 15 s.) the average value of a slave (see Exodus 21:32). Why it was paid partly in money, partly in kind, cannot be determined. Hosea only tells us enough to make the allegory intelligible. Gomer in her misery is a type of Israel in her unhappy alienation from her God.

a half-homer Strictly, a lethech. The Sept. has -a bottle of wine" (νέβελ οἴνου). Probably the translator was unacquainted with the -lethech", which was apparently not a primitive measure. Its precise relation to the homer is uncertain; A.V. however is borne out by the Jewish tradition. There is nothing analogous to it in the Egyptian dry measure, which in other details agrees exactly with the Hebrew (Révillout, Revue égyptologique11. 190).