So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley.
"Homer and a half of barley ..." Why is this mentioned?  Barnes thought that the fact of barley's being despised, generally, as human food, and usually employed in the feeding of animals might have symbolized the mean and servile state into which Gomer had fallen;[14] but, since "it was a considerable price, for a poor man of the eighth century, with which Hosea redeemed his wife,"[15] it might very well have been that Hosea could raise the necessary price only by extending himself, bringing part of it in money, and part of it in barley.  If the New English Bible, which follows the Septuagint (LXX) in rendering the words here translated "half a homer of barley" as "a measure of wine," this would be considered still more likely.  Partial payments of both money and produce were thought by Skelton to indicate less value than a full payment in money: "She was being sold as a slave ... and the price was that of a slave gored by an ox."[16]