1. for the cleansing of offense and impurity. “Cleansing” is merely implied in the Hebrew through ellipsis.

2. the names of the idols. Not only will the idols be destroyed but their very names will be expunged—thus, “they no longer shall be recalled.” One should note that invoking the name of a deity in a vow was considered to be a very weighty act.

the prophets. These are false prophets, as the mention immediately afterward of “the spirit of uncleanness” makes clear.

3. his father and his mother, his begetters. This extreme case highlights the terrible gravity of the crime of false prophecy: his own parents condemn him to death and then carry out the sentence.

for his prophesying. An alternate construction of this single Hebrew word is “when he prophesies.”

4. a hairy mantle. There is some indication that the early prophets (that is, earlier than the so-called Literary Prophets) wore hairy mantles, and so this would be the outward show of his status as a prophet.

5. I am no prophet. I am a tiller of the soil. Confronted with the charge of false prophecy, which is a capital crime, he pretends to have nothing to do with prophecy but to be only a simple farmer.

for the soil has been consigned to me. The noun in the received text is ʾadam, “man” or “humankind,” but this is probably an error for ʾadamah, “soil,” the final heh having been lost through haplography because it is also the first letter of the next word.

6. What are these wounds on your chest? His own body bears evidence against him. The wounds would be gashes, self-inflicted or made by others, as one sees with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:28, in a pagan rite to rouse the attention of a deity.

Because I was struck in the house of my lovers. Most translators render the last word as “friends,” but its general meaning is “lovers.” The usage is probably influenced by the common representation in Prophetic literature of pagan deities as “lovers” of the adulterous Israel. The wounds do not reflect any homosexual sadomasochistic practice but rather the cultic excesses of a pagan ritual.

7. My shepherd. Once again, the shepherd is the king.

the shepherd lads. The Hebrew tsoʿarim means “assistant shepherds,” which would refer figuratively to people in the royal court and administration.

9. He shall call out. As often happens in biblical usage, the pronouns switch from plural to singular, Israel now imagined as a collective.