1. before Pharaoh struck down Gaza. In the prophecy that follows, it is Babylonia (“waters come up from the north”) that attacks the Philistines, but there is some warrant for concluding that an Egyptian incursion into Philistine territory took place at some point in the last decade of the seventh century B.C.E.

2. torrent. The usual sense of the Hebrew naḥal is “wadi,” but the poetic image is based on the fact that the dry gulches of wadis are filled during the heavy winter rains with rushing torrents.

3. From the sound of his stallions’ pounding hooves. Here the poetry switches from the metaphor of the sweeping torrent to a literal representation of the Babylonian chariot corps galloping against the Philistines.

slackness of hands. “Hand” in biblical idiom is often a term for “strength,” and so “slackness of hands” means weakness, incapacity.

4. Tyre and Sidon. These are principal Phoenician cities, farther up the coast from the five Philistine cities, which also sit on the shore of the Mediterranean. There is archaeological evidence of abundant commercial contact between the Philistines and the Phoenicians, and some sort of political alliance may also have been in place.

every survivor, helper. The verbal noun “helper” often appears in military contexts and could conceivably have a technical sense of “ally.”

5. Shaved pates. Though the literal sense is “baldness,” the clear reference is to shaving the head as a sign of mourning. The gashing at the end of this verse is another act of mourning. Israelites are prohibited from following both these practices, although there are grounds to suspect that they often ignored the prohibition.

Remnant of the Anakites. The received text, which seems to say “remnant of their valley,” sheʾerit ʿimqam, does not make much sense (and there are no valleys along the coastal area where the Philistines lived). The proposal of some scholars, citing a purported Ugaritic cognate, that ʿimqam means “their strength” has no warrant elsewhere in the biblical corpus. This translation follows the Septuagint, which reads she ʾerit ha ʿanaqim, the Anakites being in biblical lore an archaic race of giants (perhaps ancestors of Goliath).

6. Woe, O sword of the LORD, / till when will you be unquiet? Babylonia is imagined as the “sword of the LORD,” carrying out His purposes in history—here, wreaking vengeance on Israel’s historic enemies, the Philistines. Even though the prophet is no friend of the Philistines, as he envisages the terrible onslaught against them, he is aghast and so asks in this apostrophe how long it will continue.

7. How can it be quiet / when the LORD has commanded it? This is the rejoinder to the horrified “how long” of the two previous lines. It is God’s will to extirpate Philistia, and so the horrific destruction must continue.