Yahweh said to me, "Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods, and love cakes of raisins."
Who was this "woman" mentioned so dramatically in this verse?  We shall not bother with the interpretations which make the whole incident to be merely a parable, nor with the notion that this is a recapitulation of Hosea's "taking" Gomer in  Hosea 1, nor with the proposition that this woman must be another person totally different from Gomer.  None of such guesses at the meaning here carry any conviction whatever.  The woman here is undoubtedly Gomer.  Many scholars have discerned this: