Hosea 1:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

So he went and took Gomer; as commanded, so he did, whether you take it parabolically or literally. If you take it literally, this Gomer will be some known harlot, and perhaps she was famous for her beauty, and skill in the courtesan's art, as her name may import. If you take it as a parable, we must take this name for a made name, assumed for its signification; both in the best sense Israel was perfect with the perfection which God did put upon her, Ezekiel 16:14, he made her Gomer; and in the worst sense she made herself Gomer, one who was drawing to her end, who had undone and consumed herself; thus the word, Psalms 12:1; and so, in one word, God's bounty and mercy, and Israel's ingratitude and sin, is set forth, together with her punishment hastening upon her. The daughter of Diblaim: literally understood, this Diblaim must be either father or mother of this Gomer, or else the name of the place where she was born. Parabolically understood, Diblaim, bunches of dried figs, may imply the deliciousness of her provision made of God, such as was made for great feasts, 1 Samuel 25:18; so 1 Chronicles 12:40: thus it will suit Hosea 2:5,9, and the places where the fig is mentioned as fruit with which God had blessed Israel. All which abused to luxury and sin, will now make her a daughter of Diblaim, of wilderness, desolate. Bare him a son: this seems to favour the literal acceptation of all this as really done, and not only as represented in vision, parable, or hieroglyphic. But while either way it will be well applied to the purpose in hand, I shall leave it to the choice of every judicious reader to interpret and apply as best likes him.