Hosea 3
Big idea: Five verses, and the shortest chapter in the prophets carries the book's costliest instruction: go again, love a woman who is loved by another and is an adulteress. The prophet pays for her — in silver and barley, roughly the price of a slave — and then imposes a long wait on both of them.
The waiting Hosea imposes on Gomer is explained in the same breath as Israel's coming years without king or shrine. Chapter 4 turns from the marriage to the nation and starts the lawsuit.
3:1–5 — Go again, love a woman
The command is not to take her back as a formality but to LOVE her, and the sentence gives its own analogy: even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes — a detail that sounds trivial and is not, since the cakes belonged to the fertility cult's festivals. Whether the woman is Gomer is not stated, though the 'again' makes it likely.
1 Yahweh said to me, “Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods, and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3 I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the prostitute, and you shall not be with any other man. I will also be so toward you.” 4 For the children of Israel shall live many days without king, without prince, without sacrifice, without sacred stone, and without ephod or idols. 5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek Yahweh their God, and David their king, and shall come with trembling to Yahweh and to his blessings in the last days.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).