Hosea 3 - Love That Redeems

Hosea buys back his unfaithful wife, mirroring God's redeeming love for Israel.

Hosea 3: Hosea Buys Back His Wife

After exposing Israel's unfaithfulness in Hosea 2, this short chapter has Hosea buy back his own wife for fifteen pieces of silver and a measure of barley.


And HaShem said unto me: 'Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend and an adulteress, even as HaShem loveth the children of Israel, though they turn unto other gods, and love cakes of raisins.

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

and I said unto her: 'Thou shalt sit solitary for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be any man's wife; nor will I be thine.'

For the children of Israel shall sit solitary many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim;

afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek HaShem their G-d, and David their king; and shall come trembling unto HaShem and to His goodness in the end of days.

The purchase pictures Israel living many days without king or sacrifice before finally seeking 'the LORD their God, and David their king,' a theme <a href="/bible/jps/hosea/chapter-4">Hosea 4</a> returns to from a different angle. That same later-day seeking appears in <a href="/bible/jps/jeremiah/chapter-50/4">Jeremiah 50:4-5</a>.