Hosea 3


Hosea 3 is the third, as well as shortest, chapter of the Book of Hosea in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book, a member of the Twelve Minor Prophets, contains the prophecies attributed to the prophet Hosea, son of Beeri; chapter 3 refers autobiographically to Hosea's marriage to a woman who is an adulterer. His purchase of her from a paramour is treated in the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary as a symbol of "Israel's condition in their present dispersion, subsequent to their return from Babylon".

Text

The original text was written in Hebrew. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets, Aleppo Codex, Codex Leningradensis. Fragments containing parts of this chapter in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including 4Q78 with extant verses 2–4; and 4Q82 with extant verses 1–5.
There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Marchalianus.

Contents and commentary

Verse 1

  • "A woman": presumed to be Gomer, who had left Hosea and was at that time living in adultery with another man, referred to as "a lover." Unlike in Hosea 1:2, here Hosea is told to "love" her; that is, to "renew his conjugal kindness to her."
The statement in the last part of this verse reflects the words of two verses in the book of Deuteronomy:
  • Deuteronomy 7:8: "Because the Lord loved you".
  • Deuteronomy 31:18: "They are turned to other gods."
  • "Raisin cakes" : that is, "cakes of grapes" or "dried raisins"; these cakes were used in idolatry.

Verse 2

  • "Bought": from the Hebrew root כָּרָה, the use here may be in the sense of "hiring" as rendered by the Septuagint and Arabic versions, as well as a term fitting for a harlot. The Latin Vulgate translates it as "I dug her," referring to the "digging" of a slave's ear who chose to stay with his master.
  • "Fifteen shekels of silver": half the price of a slave or may allude to the dowry for a bride. A shekel was about 0.4 ounce or 11 grams.
  • "A homer" of barley: was about 6 bushels or 220 liters or ten ephahs.
  • "A lethech" of barley: was "half homer", about 3 bushels or 110 liters or five ephahs, so in total: "one and a half homer" would equal "fifteen ephahs".

Verse 3

  • "You will remain with me many days": literally, "you will sit", not going after others, as before, but waiting only for him, for an undefined, long period, until he comes and takes her to himself. Hosea stipulates that she should wait for this long period before she can be restored to her conjugal rights, and he, likewise, will wait for her. In Deuteronomy 21:13, the law for taking a beautiful captive woman stipulated that she was to mourn for her family for "a full month" before she could be married.

Verse 4

Verse 5

  • "David their King": This cannot refer to David himself because he was long dead, so it must be referring to "the Son of David," of whom God says, "I will set up One Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David, and He shall be their Shepherd, and I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David a Prince among them", who would be a "witness, leader, commander to the people ; someone who was to be "raised up to David, a righteous Branch", and who was to "be called the Lord our Righteousness; David's Lord", as well as "David's Son." The verse can be paraphrased as: "Afterward the children of Israel shall repent, or turn by repentance, and shall seek the service of the Lord their God, and shall obey Messiah the Son of David, their King".

Jewish

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Christian

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