Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 3:1

"And Jehovah said unto me, Go again, love a woman beloved of [her] friend, and an adulteress, even as Jehovah loveth the children of Israel, though they turn unto other gods, and love cakes of raisins." — Hosea 3:1 (ASV)

Go again, love a woman, beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress - This woman is the same Gomer, whom the prophet had previously been commanded to take, and who (it appears from this verse) had abandoned him and was living in adultery with another man.

The “friend” is the husband himself, the prophet. The word “friend” expresses that the husband of Gomer treated her not harshly, but mildly and tenderly, making her faithlessness an even greater sin. “Friend or neighbor” too is the word chosen by our Lord to express His own love—the love of the good Samaritan, who, though not related, became “neighbor to him who fell among thieves” and had mercy on him.

Gomer is called “a woman” to describe the state of separation in which she was living. Yet God commands the prophet to “love her,” that is, show active love to her—not, as before, to “take” her, for she was already and still his wife, although unfaithful.

He is now commanded to buy her back, with the price and allowance of food as for a worthless slave, and so to keep her apart, on coarse food, abstaining from her former sins, but without the privileges of marriage, yet with the hope of eventually being restored to be fully his wife.

This prophecy is a sequel to the former and so relates to Israel after the coming of Christ, in which the former prophecy ends.

According to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel - The prophet is directed to shape his life to depict simultaneously the ingratitude of Israel (or the sinful soul) and the abiding, persevering love of God.

The woman whom God commands him to love, he had loved before her fall; he was now to love her after her fall, and during her fall, to rescue her from remaining in it. His love was to outlive hers, that he might eventually win her to him.

Such, God says, “is the love of the Lord for Israel.” He loved her before she fell, for the woman was beloved of her friend, and yet an adulteress. He loved her after she fell and while she persevered in her adultery.

For God explains His command to the prophet still to love her with the words, “according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, while they look to other gods, literally, and they are looking.” These words express a contemporary circumstance.

God was loving them and looking upon them; and they, all the while, were looking to other gods.

Love flagons of wine - This literally means “of grapes,” or perhaps, more probably, “cakes of grapes,” that is, dried raisins.

Cakes were used in idolatry (Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 44:19). The “wine” would signify the excess common in idolatry and the loss of understanding; the cakes denote the sweetness and lusciousness, yet still the dryness, of any gratification apart from God that is preferred to Him.

Israel despised and rejected the true Vine, Jesus Christ, the source of all the works of grace and righteousness, and “loved the dried cakes”—the observances of the law, which, apart from Him, were dry and worthless.