Hosea says he bought her “for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley” Hosea 3:2. The verse gives the exact price and measures used.
In Hosea 3:2 Hosea describes a concrete action: he “buys” the woman back for a mixed payment of silver and barley. The line is brief but weighty: the relationship is treated as recoverable, yet it now has a cost. Hosea 3 is part of the book’s opening section where Hosea’s family life functions as a lived message (chs. Just before this verse, Hosea is told to go again and love a woman who is involved with another man, mirroring Israel’s divided loyalty (Hosea 3:1).
Hosea 3:2 presents a concrete, costly act: Hosea says he “bought her for himself,” paying a specified price in both silver and barley. The verse is not a metaphor in the abstract; it reports a transaction with an itemized cost (fifteen pieces of silver plus one and a half homers of barley).
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with Hosea 3:2, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
2So I bought her to me for fifteen [pieces] of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half-homer of barley;