If he, a man, could love so deeply and could be willing to forgive, how much the more so does God love His people; how much the more so will God have compassion and forgive, if Israel will repent and return to Him?

And that very night it seemed that God had ordained an ordeal for Hosea to test him and inspire him in his further work as a prophet.

A message was brought to Hosea that his wife, Gomer, was to be sold as a slave at public auction, in the slave market of Samaria, on the morrow!

CHAPTER III.

_The Repentant Returns._

With a bowed head, though with a stout heart, Hosea went to the market place on the following morning. He mingled with the people in the vicinity of the slave auction district, watching particularly a certain block, on which, he was told, Gomer was to be offered for sale.

He studied carefully every woman that was put upon the block. At last he recognized her. But how changed she seemed. Her beauty, for which she had been famous, was gone. Her straight erect form was stooped. Her eyes, once proud, were cast down. She had a forlorn, hopeless look, as if she didn't care what happened to her. Evidently she had suffered greatly.

Where had she been during the past four years? What hardships had she been through that she was so changed? Why did she fall so low that she had to be sold into slavery?

The answers to these questions would have made no difference in the plan Hosea had determined to follow with Gomer. Standing on the outskirts of the crowd, he raised bid after bid, until he bought her for "fifteen pieces of silver and a homer of barley and a half-homer of barley."

Gomer was not at all concerned about the one who had purchased her. She did not take a single glance in the direction of those who were bidding for her. When sold, she stepped wearily down from the block and waited listlessly to be claimed by the owner and taken away.

Hosea approached her, stepped to her side and spoke her name in a low voice: "Gomer!"

She raised her eyes and looked at him as through a haze. Hosea, too, had changed much during the past four years. His love for Gomer, the uncertainty of her whereabouts, his grief, his constant preaching to Israel that fell on deaf ears, had made deep furrows in his face and brought wrinkles to his forehead.

"Come with me," he said softly to her.

For a moment Gomer stared at him; then she fell in a dead faint at his feet.

It was a long time before she revived. Sorrow and repentance for her foolishness in leaving a home where her husband loved her and where her children would have worshiped her, had she permitted them to do so, had sapped all her strength. The sudden shock of seeing Hosea and the knowledge that he had bought her as a slave nearly killed her.

But Hosea had no thought of revenge. In his great heart there was naught but love for Gomer.

On their way home Gomer began:

"I regret," she said, "I am sorry--"