1. Woe, crown of the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards. Ephraim, the northern kingdom that was wiped out by Assyria in 721 B.C.E., is a somewhat puzzling presence at the beginning of this prophecy, which probably refers to the predicament of the southern kingdom, besieged by Assyria, twenty years later. Perhaps the complete desolation of Ephraim, whose leaders are seen as dissolute, is meant as a portent for Judah.

the fat-proud. The Hebrew spelling of geyʾ would lead one to understand it as “valley”—that is, “valley of the fat growth” or “valley of oils.” It seems preferable to read it as geiʾ, “proud,” in apposition with “stunned by wine” and referring to the drunkards.

2. one powerful and strong for the Master. The reference is probably Assyria, conceived as God’s instrument for punishing Judah.

3–4. the crown of the pride . . . / his glory’s splendor. There are evidently two idioms in this image—a crown which is trampled, and something like a floral wreath, which withers.

5. a crown of splendor and a tiara of glory. In these tightly woven lines, the undeserved or false crown adorning the drunkards is replaced by the true crown that God becomes for His people.

6. a spirit of justice. The drunkards, as the continuation of the prophecy makes vividly clear, pervert justice and distort values, and they are to be replaced by a just ruler.

those who drive back battle from the gate. The city gate would be assaulted by besiegers, who are here repelled by valiant defenders.

7. And these, too, blundered through wine. The Judahites resemble their counterparts in Ephraim.

strong drink. As elsewhere, sheikhar, which like wine is a product of the vine, probably indicates grappa.

the seer. The Hebrew term clearly means this, not “vision,” as many translations here have it, and it jibes with the reference to prophet and priest gone astray.

juddered in judgment. The translation emulates the alliteration of the Hebrew, paqu peliliyah. The Hebrew verb does mean to shake, falter, be unsteady.

8. For all the tables were covered with vomit. The initial notion of drunkenness is now vividly joined by an evocation of the disgusting scene of wine-swilling debauchery.

filth. The Hebrew term indicates excremental filth, so the physical effect of the debauches comes out of the body at both ends.

9. To whom will they teach knowledge. The most likely referent of “they” is the drunken priests, prophets, and seers, whose incoherent teaching would scarcely be suitable for newly weaned babes.

10. For it is filth-pilth, filth-pilth, / vomit-momit, vomit-momit. Wildly divergent interpretations have been proposed for these words. The literal sense would seem to be: “precept precept, line line.” But if precepts are at issue here, they are precepts that have been turned into gibberish by these drunkards. The phonetic kinship between tsaw, precept or command, and tsoʾah, filth or excrement, and between qaw, line, and qiʾ, vomit, is surely not accidental. The translation seeks to convey both this correspondence and the effect of gibberish.

11. For in a barbarous tongue / and in alien language / He shall speak to this people. This is measure-for-measure justice: they have reduced any instruction they might offer to drunken babbling, and God will address them through the incomprehensible language of the Akkadian-speaking Assyrian conquerors.

13. And the word of the LORD became for them— / filth-pilth, filth-pilth. God’s very word, which as leaders of the people they had the responsibility to convey to the people, has turned into grotesque nonsense syllables.

15. We have sealed a covenant with Death. The language here verges on the mythological (Mot, the word used here, is the Canaanite god of death). Some interpreters understand this as a reference to the party in Jerusalem that promoted an alliance with Egypt, known for its cult of the dead, against Assyria. That is possible, but the more evident point is that these perverse leaders have replaced God with the god of death, imagining that they will be safe from all dangers through these covenants with the deity of the netherworld.

16. I am about to lay a foundation stone in Zion. This may look like a switch in direction, but it is not necessary to declare this a later editorial intrusion. In place of a city ruled by drunken idiots, God will establish a just, firm-founded city, while those who made a covenant with death will be swept away (verses 17–21).

19. the conveying of lessons. This phrase refers back to verse 9 and to the reduction of teaching to babble in the lines that followed it. Now, instead of gibberish, there will be terror.

20. For the couch is too short to stretch out on. This homey image represents the acute discomfiting helplessness of the miscreants when they are overtaken by divine judgment: they can neither lie without being cramped in the bed nor cover themselves.

21. like Mount Perazim / . . . like Gibeon Valley. These were places of victory, respectively, for David and for Joshua where God intervened on their behalf. Now He will intervene instead to effect a dire defeat of His people.

23. Give ear and hear My voice. This formal opening injunction clearly signals the beginning of a new prophecy.

24. Does the plowman plow all day to sow. These words initiate an extended simile—or perhaps it is meant to be a parable—that would have spoken directly to the ancient audience because of its agricultural imagery. Unfortunately, not all of the terms and agricultural procedures are transparent to modern readers. What compounds the difficulty is that the referent of the parable—the nimshal of the mashal—is barely hinted at.

25. fennel. This is one conjectural understanding of the Hebrew qetsaḥ.

in rows. This translation reads shurah for the opaque sorah of the Masoretic Text.

26. For He guides him rightly. This would be the evident referent of the parable: God imbues the farmer with understanding so that he can raise his crops in proper fashion. Perhaps there is a more general implication that God implants in humankind the requisite wisdom to conduct all of its affairs. But it must be said that the Hebrew verb used here generally means “to discipline,” not “to instruct.”

28. Grain for bread. “Grain for” is merely implied in the Hebrew.

He runs over it. The verb here generally means “to panic,” and so the translation, somewhat conjecturally, is dictated by the context.

29. He is wondrous in counsel, His wisdom is great. This concluding line is evidently meant to point the moral that all practical wisdom, like the know-how of the farmer who is careful to thresh his grain without polluting it, comes from God. It remains something of a puzzle why the editors chose to introduce a text of this sort in a series of prophecies about the political fate of the people of Israel.