Hosea 3:2

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

"I bought her ..." The meaning of this is accurately given in the New English Bible, "I got her back," or, as in the footnote "I bought her back." This makes the identification of the woman as Gomer a certainty. "She had actually become a slave-concubine, and the price paid was the price of a slave."[10] Of course the verb for "I bought" here is uncertain in meaning.[11]

"For fifteen pieces of silver ... etc." The total value of the price paid is estimated at thirty pieces of silver. Given observed that:

From Exodus 21:32, we learn that thirty shekels were the estimated value of a manservant, or a maidservant ... The price paid by the prophet was partly in money, and partly in kind, the total being the exact price of an ordinary maidservant.[12]

This price may not be regarded as the money paid at the very first when Hosea took Gomer from her parents, "For it cannot be shown that the custom of purchasing a bride from her parents had any existence among the Israelites."[13] Furthermore, if Gomer was not a slave, it would not have been necessary for Hosea to purchase her, because she was his already. Also, Gomer was not married to another subsequently to her marriage to Hosea; for, if that had been the case, it would have been contrary to God's law for him to take her back. It is clear that he bought her out of slavery.

"Homer and a half of barley ..." Why is this mentioned? Barnes thought that the fact of barley's being despised, generally, as human food, and usually employed in the feeding of animals might have symbolized the mean and servile state into which Gomer had fallen;[14] but, since "it was a considerable price, for a poor man of the eighth century, with which Hosea redeemed his wife,"[15] it might very well have been that Hosea could raise the necessary price only by extending himself, bringing part of it in money, and part of it in barley. If the New English Bible, which follows the Septuagint (LXX) in rendering the words here translated "half a homer of barley" as "a measure of wine," this would be considered still more likely. Partial payments of both money and produce were thought by Skelton to indicate less value than a full payment in money: "She was being sold as a slave ... and the price was that of a slave gored by an ox."[16]

Despite all these learned opinions, however, the most significant thing regarding this price of thirty pieces of silver, however, Hosea paid it, was pointed out by Butler:

"It is indeed interesting that the price paid for Jesus' betrayal was 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12), and that Gomer was redeemed for thirty shekels (a shekel being about the equivalent of a 50-cent silver coin)."[17]

The contrast in those transactions points up the dramatic failure of mankind to recognize the incomparable value of the precious blood of Jesus, by which alone all men may be saved. Judas and the priests of Israel made it to be equivalent to that of a slave like Gomer! May all men beware of making a similar mistake.