One man started the bidding: “12 pieces of silver!”
“13!” Said Hosea.
“14 pieces of silver!”
Hosea’s bid was “15!”
The low bidders were beginning to drop out, but one man continued bidding: “15 pieces of silver and five bushels of barley!”
Hosea said, “15 pieces of silver, 5 bushels of barley and a measure of wine.” The auctioneer looked around, seeing no one else ready to bid said, “Sold to Hosea for 15 pieces of silver, 5 bushels of barley and a measure of wine.”
You must understand that at this point Hosea owned his wife. She was his property. He could do anything he wished with her. If he had wanted to kill her out of spite, he could have done it. Anyone who knew him would have laughed at his antics. They would have known what she had put him through, and he was just wasting his money. She would be better off being sold as a servant to fetch and serve and carry water and never enter the kind of life that brought her to the state in the first place.
But that is not what Hosea does
Hosea 3:2-3 So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine. Then I said to her, “You must live in my house for many days and stop your prostitution. During this time, you will not have sexual relations with anyone, not even with me.”
Maybe you can understand this as an illustration…
God was the auctioneer.
God said, “Is there a bid for these poor, hopeless, enslaved sinners?”
Jesus said, “I bid the price of my blood.”
The father said, “Sold to the Lord Jesus Christ for the price of his blood.” There was no greater bid than that.
So we became his, and he took us and clothed us, not with dirty robes of our old unrighteousness, which are as filthy rags, but with the robes of his righteousness. And he said-he says it to you today if you are a believer - “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any other man, and I will live with you”. That is how God loves us. That is what Jesus did on your behalf. (Based in part on James Montgomery Boyce commentary on Hosea)