From the early Church Fathers to now.
1 Jewish · 1 Catholic · 1 Reformed · 1 Lutheran
“In the days of Samgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jahel the paths rested: and they that went by them, walked through by-ways.”
“In the days of Shamgar ben Anas, in the days of Yael. This teaches that Yael, too, judged Yisroel in her days. Thoroughfares came to a halt. The Yisroelites were afraid to undertake normal travel, because of their enemies. They would proceed along round about pathways, clandestinely.”
“The paths rested. The ways to the sanctuary of God were unfrequented; and men walked in the bye-ways of error and sin. (Challoner) — Though Samgar and Jehel were so remarkable for their valour, as they had manifested on a late occasion, yet they did not prevent the incursions of the enemy both on the south and north. (Haydock) — The merchants durst not travel, as usual, through the country. (Drusius) — God had threatened the faithless Israel with this punishment, Leviticus xxvi. 22., and Lamentations i. 4., and Isaias xxiii. 8. (Calmet) — They that went by them formerly without apprehension, are now forced to seek out bye-ways. (Haydock) — Thus was justly punished the negligence of those who observed not the festivals of the Lord, nor frequented his tabernacle. (Menochius)”
“The song proceeds in these verses to describe the sad condition of the country, the oppression of the people, and the origin of all the national distress in the people's apostasy from God. Idolatry was the cause of foreign invasion and internal inability to resist it.”
“6 In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, In the days of Jael, the paths kept holiday, And the wanderers of the paths went crooked ways. 7 The towns in Israel kept holiday, they kept holiday, Until that I, Deborah, arose, That I arose a mother in Israel 8 They chose new gods; Then was war at the gates: Was there a shield seen and a spear Among forty thousand in Israel? The deep degradation and disgrace into which Israel had sunk before the appearance of Deborah, through its falling away from the Lord into idolatry, forms the dark reverse of that glorification at Sinai. Although, after Ehud, Shamgar had also brought help to the people against their enemies by a victory over the Philistines (Jdg 3:31), and although Jael, who proved herself a heroine by slaying the fugitive Sisera, was then alive, things had got to such a pitch with Israel, that no one would venture upon the public high roads. There are no good grounds for the conjecture that Jael was a different person from the Jael mentioned in Jdg 4:17., whether a judge who is not further known, as Ewald supposes, or a female judge who stood at the head of the nation in these unhappy times (Bertheau). ארחות חדלוּ, lit., "the paths ceased," sc., to be paths, or to be trodden by men. נתיבות הלכי, "those who went upon paths," or beaten ways, i.e., those who were obliged to undertake journeys for the purpose of friendly intercourse or trade, notwithstanding the burden of foreign rule which pressed upon the land; such persons went by "twisted paths," i.e., by roads and circuitous routes which turned away from the high roads. And the פּרזון, i.e., the cultivated land, with its open towns and villages, and with their inhabitants, was as forsaken and desolate as the public highways. The word perazon has been rendered judge or guidance by modern expositors, after the example of Teller and Gesenius; and in Jdg 5:11 decision or guidance. But this meaning, which has been adopted into all the more recent lexicons, has nothing really to support it, and does not even suit our verse, into which it would introduce the strange contradiction, that at the time when Shamgar and Jael were judges, there were no judges in Israel. In addition to the Septuagint version, which renders the word δυνατοὶ in this verse (i.e., according to the Cod. Vat., for the Col. Al. has φράζων), and then in the most unmeaning way adopts the rendering αὔξησον in Jdg 5:11, from which we may clearly see that the translators did not know the meaning of the word, it is common to adduce an Arabic word which signifies segregavit, discrevit rem ab aliis, though it is impossible to prove that the Arabic word ever had the meaning to judge or to lead. All the old translators, as well as the Rabbins, have based their rendering of the word upon פּרזי, inhabitant of the flat country (Deu 3:5, and Sa1 6:18), and פּרזות, the open flat country, as distinguished from the towns surrounded by walls (Eze 38:11; Zac 2:8), according to which פּרזון, as the place of meeting, would denote both the cultivated land with its unenclosed towns and villages, and also the population that was settled in the open country in unfortified places-a meaning which also lies at the foundation of the word in Hab 3:14. Accordingly, Luther has rendered the word Bauern (peasants). שׁקּמתּי עד for קמתּי אשׁר עד. The contraction of אשׁר into שׁ, with Dagesh following, and generally pointed with Seghol, but here with Patach on account of the ק, which is closely related to the gutturals, belongs to the popular character of the song, and is therefore also found in the Song of Solomon (Jdg 1:12; Jdg 2:7, Jdg 2:17; Jdg 4:6). It is also met with here and there in simple prose (Jdg 6:17; Jdg 7:12; Jdg 8:26); but it was only in the literature of the time of the captivity and a still later date, that it found its way more and more from the language of ordinary conversation into that of the Scriptures. Deborah describes herself as "a mother in Israel," on account of her having watched over her people with maternal care, just as Job calls himself a father to the poor who had been supported by him (Job 29:16; cf. Isa 22:21).”
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.