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. The price paid is too small to be a probable dowry wherewith to buy a wife from her parents; but it is just half the price of a female slave in money, the rest of the, price being made up in grain (Exodus 21:32, "thirty shekels of silver"). Hosea pays this for the redemption of his wife who has become the slave of her paramont. The price being half grain was because the latter was the allowance of food for the slave, and of the coarsest kind, not wheat, but barley, which was the offering of one accused of adultery; and being the food of beasts, implies that she had degraded herself beneath her true human dignity as allied with God, to be as the horse and mule which have no understanding. Israel, as committing sin, was the slave of sin (John 8:34; Romans 6:16-20; 2 Peter 2:19, "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants (slaves) of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage"). The low price expresses Israel's worthlessness.