Dan... Mount Ephraim. — The two places are chosen, not like Dan and Beer-sheba, as extreme limits, but as stages in the march of the invader: first Dan (as in Jeremiah 8:16), the northernmost point (Deuteronomy 34:1; Judges 20:1) of the whole land of Israel, then Mount Ephraim, as the northern boundary of Judaea. The verbs grow in strength with the imagined nearness, first announce, as of a rumour from a distance, then proclaim, as of a danger more imminent.
Affliction. — In the Hebrew the same word (aven) as in the “thoughts of vanity.” Playing on the two aspects of the word, the prophet says that aven comes as the penalty of aven — the “nothingness” of destruction as that of the “nothingness” of the idol.