Hosea 3:2

So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver,.... Or, "fifteen shekels", which was about one pound seventeen shillings and six pence of our money, reckoning a shekel at two shillings and six

So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley: So I bought her.

So I bought her; as I was commanded, I procured, or, as we read it, bought her: which exactly answers to the state of the Jews when in Egypt, tainted with Egyptian idolatry, and poor, without a portion; bought or redeemed to be affianced to God. Fifteen pieces of silver; whatever was the exact quantity and value of these pieces we need not here curiously inquire; but note, it was half the value of a slave, , and was some 37s. 6d. An homer: this measure might be about fourteen bushels; so the whole will, for her diet, amount to twenty-one bushels, no great provision for her diet; and it is barley in both places, the meanest kind of provision, and suited to a low condition, ,12: all this the fuller to set forth Israel’ s indigence and ingratitude to God, and God’ s bounty to Israel.

Hosea 3:2 So I bought her to me for fifteen [pieces] of silver, and [for] an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley:Ver. 2. So I bought her to me.] God is to be obeyed, though it go never so much against the heart and the hair with us. ‘Eπουτω Yεω. Follow God, was a heathen but an honest precept (Epictet.). This he that would do, must first deny himself, and say, with that Dutch divine, Veniat, veniat, verbum Dei, &c., Let a word of command come forth from God, and we will submit thereto, though we had six hundred lives to lose, yea, though we can see no reason for it. Indeed, in human governments, where reason is shut out, there tyranny is thrust in. But where God commandeth, there to ask a reason is presumption; to oppose reason is flat rebellion. I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver] That is, fifteen shekels, or shillings, or thereabouts; no great price it was that he gave for her, whether for hire or dowry; probably it was in order to marrying her, and in reference to that law, Deuteronomy 21:11. Israel was once a precious people, God’ s peculiar treasure, such as comprehended all his gettings. The Jews have a saying, that those seventy souls that went down with Jacob into Egypt were more worth than all the seventy nations of the earth beside. But now, behold, how cheap they are grown; they are valued all of them at fifteen pieces of silver, a goodly price, Zechariah 11:12 Matthew 27:9. If the tongue of the righteous be as choice silver, yet the heart of the wicked is little worth, Proverbs 10:20. There (as in the sea) is that leviathan (the king of all the children of pride), and there are creeping things innumerable, crawling lusts, and lawless passions; but for anything of worth, it is not there to be had. Hence, as at the last destruction of Jerusalem, thirty Jews were sold for one penny, so here the whole body of the nation are bought and sold for a small sum. "How weak is thine heart" (how light cheap), saith the Lord God to this light housewife, "seeing thou dost all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman?" Ezekiel 16:30. God and his people reckon of men by their righteousness. He looked down from heaven to see who sought after God, Psalms 14:3. As for others, he regards them no more than men do dross, draft, chaff, or such like refuse stuff, Psalms 119:119; Psalms 1:4, &c., whatever great thoughts they take up of themselves, and however the world rates them. Antiochus Epiphanes, that great king of Syria, is called a vile person, Daniel 11:21. And the adversary is this wicked Haman, saith Esther: that was his true title, which he perhaps never heard till now.

(2) Pieces of silver.—Shekels. So I bought her.—Gomer was treated as no longer a wife, but requiring to be restored to such a position. The purchase of wives is still a very common practice in the East (See Henderson’s Commentary, and Deut. xxi 14.) Half homer of barley.—Half a homer is the translation given to the Hebrew word lethekh, which occurs only in this passage. This rendering is founded on the interpretation half a cor (cor = homer), which is given in all the Greek versions except the LXX. The latter read “and a nébhel of wine,” the nébhel being probably a skin bottle of a certain liquid capacity. This pre-supposes a different Hebrew text. From 2 Kings 7:1 we may infer that an ephah of barley at ordinary times would cost one shekel (comp. Amos 8:5), and since a homer contains ten ephahs, the price paid by the prophet was thirty shekels altogether. Reckoning a shekel as = two drachms (so LXX.), or 2s. 6 d., the price paid by Hosea was about £3 15s. According to Exodus 21:32, this was the compensation enacted for a slave gored to death by a bull, and is a hint of the degradation to which Gomer had sunk.

Verse 2. Fifteen pieces of silver] If they were shekels, the price of this woman was about two pounds five shillings. A homer of barley] As the homer was about eight bushels, or something more, the homer and half was about twelve or thirteen bushels.

So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver - The fifteen shekels were half the price of a common slave Exodus 21:32, and so may denote her worthlessness.

2. The command is carried out. I bought her — The woman described in Hosea 3:1. Why he had to buy her back is not stated, nor is it quite clear.