1. trust. The Hebrew term ḥesed is usually represented in this translation as “kindness,” but it also often implies loyalty in a covenant or relationship, and that is clearly the salient meaning here.

2. They burst bonds. The Hebrew says merely “burst” (which could also mean “break through” or “spread out”), but what the verb appears to imply here is reprobate behavior, and thus “bonds” has been added for clarification.

blood spills upon blood. Literally, “blood touches blood.”

4. when your people inveighs against priest. The Hebrew of this clause is obscure and looks as though it has been scrambled in scribal transmission. It reads literally: “and your people is like the quarrels [or inveighings] of a priest.” The general idea of the whole line would seem to be: offer no criticism when your people inveighs against the priests, for they deserve it.

5. you. The probable reference is to the priest, matched by the mention of the prophet in the next verset. Both have betrayed their calling of providing moral instruction to the people.

7. As they increased. Others take this to mean “most of them.”

8. My people’s offense offerings they eat, / and they long for its crimes. The priests had a substantial portion of the sacrificial animal set aside for their own consumption. Here they are represented as wanting the people to transgress more and more because that would bring them more offense offerings to eat.

10. play the whore yet not burst bonds. The second verb is the same verb that is used in verse 2. In the understanding behind this translation, the meaning would be: they were promiscuous without ever attaining the immoral freedom of total libertinage, just as they ate (perhaps even stuffed themselves) without being sated. Others, looking toward the sense of “spread out” that the verb sometimes has, think the reference is to lack of progeny from their promiscuous couplings.

12. his rod tells him what to do. This would be a divining rod. The words “what to do” are added in the translation to make clear that this is an activity of seeking guidance parallel to the asking of an oracle in the first verset.

against their God. The literal sense of the Hebrew preposition is “from under,” the word “under” suggesting “authority.”

13. On the mountaintops they sacrificed, / on the hills. These terms, and the small catalogue of trees that follows, suggest worship of nature gods, often accompanied by fertility rites—hence the invocation of the whoring daughters in the next line.

14. I will make no reckoning with your daughters. They are not accountable because they have been led astray by their fathers; the “they themselves” who go off whoring are the fathers.

15. let Judah not be held guilty. Again, this is often seen as an intervention of the Judahite editor, though the inference is not inevitable.

do not come to Gilgal. Gilgal was a well-known cultic site in the north, near the Jordan.

nor go up to Beth-Aven. Beth-Aven, which means “house of sin,” is probably not the actual place-name but a polemic substitution for Bethel, one of the two principal cultic sites of the northern kingdom.

16. Now shall the LORD herd him / like a sheep in an open field? If Israel behaves like a cow that swerves from the way that she should go (occasionally they were used as draft animals), how could one expect God to allow it the freedom of a sheep pacifically grazing in an open field?

17. Let him be. This is a little obscure but it probably means that since Ephraim has become so addicted to idolatry, there is no point in trying to rebuke or dissuade him—let him wallow in his vile cult.

18. When their swilling is over. The Hebrew implies that they have recovered from their drunken stupor—now they are ready for sex with a whore.

They love the disgrace of their defenders. This clause is obscure and may have suffered textual damage. First, the two words represented as “they love,” ʾahavu heivu, look strange (they might mean “they love, give”), and the second word may be a dittography triggered by the last two syllables of the preceding word. It is also not clear who the defenders are, and the Hebrew says “her defenders.” The conclusion of many traditional Hebrew commentators that the reference is to the leaders of the people is as good a guess as any.

19. The wind bundles them in its wings. The wind will carry off the profligate drunkards and fornicators. This is an image similar to the one in Psalm 1 where the wicked are borne off like chaff, but the notion here of being bundled in the wings of the wind evokes the helpless passivity of the practitioners of vice carried away to their destruction.