Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 3:2

"So I bought her to me for fifteen [pieces] of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half-homer of barley;" — Hosea 3:2 (ASV)

Pieces of silver.— Shekels.

So I bought her. —Gomer was treated as no longer a wife, but requiring to be restored to such a position. The purchase of wives is still a very common practice in the East (See Henderson’s Commentary, and Deuteronomy 21:14).

Half homer of barley.— Half a homer is the translation given to the Hebrew word lethekh, which occurs only in this passage. This rendering is founded on the interpretation half a cor (cor = homer), which is given in all the Greek versions except the Septuagint. The latter read “and a nébhel of wine,” the nébhel being probably a skin bottle of a certain liquid capacity. This presupposes a different Hebrew text.

From 2 Kings 7:1 we may infer that an ephah of barley at ordinary times would cost one shekel , and since a homer contains ten ephahs, the price paid by the prophet was thirty shekels altogether. Reckoning a shekel as = two drachms (so Septuagint), or 2 shillings and 6 pence, the price paid by Hosea was about 3 pounds and 15 shillings. According to Exodus 21:32, this was the compensation enacted for a slave gored to death by a bull, and is a hint of the degradation to which Gomer had sunk.