GOMER gō’ mər (גֹּ֣מֶר, meaning perhaps completion, perfection). Son of Japheth; wife of Hosea. 1. Son of Japheth and grandson of Noah (Gen 10:2, 3). Father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. His offspring are prob. the Cimmerians (Akkad. gimmirrai, Gr. Κιμμέριοι). Gomer (the Cimmerians) is mentioned in Ezekiel 38:6 as supporting an attack on Israel that will fail because the Lord is defending His people. (Some feel that “men of Gamad,” Ezek 27:11, is copyist’s error for Gomer.) The Cimmerians were forced out of S Russia by the Scythians and crossed over the Caucasus into Asia Minor at the end of the 8th cent. b.c. In the following cent., they fought the Assyrians, conquered Urartu, then subdued Phrygia and Lydia, and fought Gr. cities on the W coast.

2. Wife of Hosea, an 8th-cent. prophet in Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II. Daughter of Diblaim (Hos 1:3). The Lord asked Hosea to marry a harlot. He married Gomer and by her had children to whom were given illustrative, or symbolic, names. The marriage to a harlot pictured the Lord’s marriage to His people who had gone astray into idolatry. Some moralists have questioned the propriety of Hosea marrying a harlot and have proposed the possibility that she was pure at the time of her marriage, but that both the Lord and Hosea knew that she would fall into sin. Hosea is later told to marry again, “an adulteress” (3:1); some feel that this is the same woman after she had left Hosea, being bought again and asked to abstain from harlotry. Whether or not this is Gomer, it illustrates that though God’s people sin the Lord loves His people and wants them to return to Him, but to refrain from sin. Some feel that these are not actual marriages but simply illustrations.

Bibliography N. Snaith, Mercy and Sacrifice (1953), 27-38; The Cambridge Ancient History, III (1960); G. A. F. Knight, Hosea (1960), 27-29, 40-65; J. M. Ward, Hosea (1966), 3-71.