1. is just the same. More literally, “is equal to it,” revocalizing the verb yeshaveh as yishveh.

When it was good in his land. When the land flourished and yielded its abundance, the Israelites used the bounty they had garnered from the land to build lavish pagan altars.

2. He shall break the back of their altars. The subject of the verb is God. The verb itself is an unusual and vivid choice: its general meaning is “to behead” or “break the neck.”

3. We have no king. This speech attributed to the people may reflect the political predicament of the northern kingdom, which was plagued by a series of coups and assassinations.

for we have not feared the LORD, / and a king—what can he do to us? There is an a fortiori logic here: we have not feared the LORD, so why should we fear a king? The Israelites have embraced a rule of anarchy, rejected the authority of monarchs and of the divine King.

5. Beth-Aven. As before, this is a pejorative distortion of Bethel.

For his people mourns for it. The antecedent is the calf icon at Bethel.

his priests. The term used, kemarim, usually refers to officiants in a pagan cult, in contrast to kohanim, priests of God.

They wail. The received text has yagilu, “they exult.” This translation adopts a widely proposed emendation, yeililu. The mistake, if it is a mistake, might have been triggered by the word for “departed” (or “exiled”) in the second verset, galah, “for it has departed from them.” There is an echo here of the report of the loss of the Ark to the Philistines in 1 Samuel 4:22.

6. King Jareb. See the comment on 5:13.

7. and her king. The translation adds “and” for the sake of coherence.

8. And they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us.” The inhabitants of Samaria, in their terror of the destruction overtaking them, extravagantly beg of the mountains and hills to cover them.

9. the days of Gibeah. See the comment on 9:9.

there they took their stand. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain, although the ordinary verb for “stand” is used.

War will not overtake them in Gibeah. This should perhaps be construed as the speech of the inhabitants of Gibeah, imagining that they will be safe from evil enemies. In the story that follows the gang-rape in Judges 19, an alliance of the tribes in fact attacks Gibeah and the whole tribe of Benjamin and comes close to exterminating them. This will be the fate of the northern kingdom.

10. harness them. The vocalization of the Hebrew word is anomalous, and some see a different verb here. “Harness,” however, makes good sense in conjunction with the image of the plowing calf in what follows.

11. passed over its goodly neck. The implied object of the verb is “yoke.”

[Judah]. This word is bracketed because it does not make sense in context and may well be the interpolation of the Judahite editor.

12. and it is time to seek the LORD. Once the (metaphoric) field has been planted in righteousness and reaped in faithfulness, the time will be ripe to seek the LORD.

teaches you righteousness. A pun is hidden in the verb “teaches,” yoreh, because it has a homonymous noun, “former rain,” which would fructify the planted field.

13. denial’s fruit. The phrase also suggests disappointing or false fruit that cannot really be eaten.

in your own way. The Masoretic Text makes perfectly good sense, but it is worth noting that the Septuagint seems to have used a Hebrew text that read berikhbekha, “in your chariots,” instead of bedarkhekha, “in your own way.” This yields a better parallelism with “warriors” in the second verset.

14. the clamor. This is the loud noise of the attacking army.

like Shalmaneser’s ravaging. The Hebrew shows merely “Shalman,” not an attested name. It seems likely that this is an abbreviated version of “Shalmaneser,” the Assyrian emperor.

Beth-Arbel. Nothing is known about this place and the evidently savage fighting that took place there.

15. Thus is it done to you. This translation construes the third-person singular verb as an equivalent of the passive. It could also be understood as “He [God] does to you.” A third, rather less likely, possibility adopted by others is to construe the whole clause as “Thus does Bethel do to you.”