Bible Dictionaries
Gomer

Holman Bible Dictionary

(goh' muhr) Personal name meaning, “complete, enough,” or “burning coal.” 1. Daughter of Diblaim and wife of Hosea the prophet (Hosea 1:3 ). She is described in Hosea 1:2 as “a wife of whoredoms.” Various explanations have been offered for that designation. Some have maintained that she was a common prostitute. Others have maintained that she was a cultic prostitute in the service of Baal. Some have suggested she symbolized Israel's worship of many gods. Still others have believed she was an ordinary woman who became unfaithful after her marriage to Hosea.fjcr pbHer unfaithfulness to her husband became a sort of living parable of Israel's unfaithfulness to Yahweh. See Genesis 10:2 ). He is apparently seen as representing the Cimmerians, an Indo-European people from southern Russia who settled in Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Assyrian sources show they threatened Assyria after 700 B.C. He was the father of Ashkenaz or the Scythians of Jeremiah 51:27 who displaced the Cimmerians from their home in Russia. Gomer was also the father of Riphath (or Diphath in 1 Chronicles 1:6 ) and of Togarmah. Riphath is unknown except for Josephus' identification of them with the Paphlagonians who lived between the Black Sea and Bithynia. Togarmah was a city-state north of Carchemish near modern Gurun. The nation Gomer made Ezekiel's list of condemned peoples in the days of Gog of Magog (Ezekiel 38:6 )