Isaiah 3:16

Moreover the Lord saith, because the daughters of Zion are haughty,.... The wives or daughters of the rulers, princes, or elders; these were "high", affected to look high and tall, and therefore

Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Because

The daughters of Zion; the women; as hitherto he reproved the men. Walk with stretched forth necks; affecting stateliness, , and to seem tall. Wanton eyes; or, as others, twinkling with their eyes in a lascivious manner. Walking and mincing as they go, after the manner of loose and wanton persons. Making a tinkling with their feet, by some ornaments which they wore upon their shoes.

Isaiah 3:16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing [as] they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:Ver. 16. Moreover the Lord saith.] He hath this other saying to the other sex, for the maintaining of whose pride and luxury their husbands and paramours exercised such cruelty, as before, in the reign of Henry II, King of France, A.D. 1554. Many were burned there for religion, as they said, but indeed to satiate the covetousness, and support the pomp of Diana Valentina, the king’ s mistress, to whom he had given all the confiscation of goods made in the kingdom for cause of heresy. Because the daughters of Zion.] The court ladies. Are haughty.] Elatae, h. e., superbia inflatae, puffed up with pride, first in heart, and then in habit; for pride will bud. And walk.] Women should keep the house, saith Paul. Sarah was in the tent, and these professed to be her daughters, but were nothing like her, Modestia enim a superbia triumphata est. With stretched forth necks.] Like cranes or swans, that they might show their fair foreheads, whereas nature hath given the submiss and modest visages. And wanton eyes.] Heb., Lying or deceiving, viz., by their lewd, lascivious looks, twinkling and making signs. Some render it facie cerussata, with their painted faces, and counterfeit visages, whereby, to the reproach of their Maker, they would seem fairer than they are. Walking and mincing as they go.] Or, Tripping or tabering, with an affected gait, after the manner of dancers. Or ruffling in their silks and taffetas, with which last word the original seems to have affinity. Others derive it from taph, a little child, and render it instar parvulorum ambulant, they take short steps, as little ones do, so nice they are in their gait and garb; elaborata quadam concinnitate gressum modulantes. Making a tinkling with their feet.] Going as if they were shackled, or as young colts that are to be broken and brought to a pace. Some think they wore bells about their legs, or spangles on their pantofles. Pope Sixtus Quartus was wont to give his harlot, Tyresia, pantofles covered with pearls. Hist. of Council of Trent, p. 387. Minutim et numerose passus conserunt. - Jac. Revius. A slipper; formerly applied very variously, app., at one time or another, to every sort of indoor slippers or loose shoes; esp. to the high-heeled cork-soled chopins; also to outdoor overshoes or goloshes; and to all manner of Oriental and non-European slippers, sandals, and the like.

(16) Because the daughters of Zion . . .—From the princes that worked evil, Isaiah turns to their wives, sisters, concubines, who were showing themselves degenerate daughters of Sarah and Rebecca. A like denunciation meets us in Isaiah 32:9-12, but this is without a parallel in the minuteness of its detail. It is as though the prophet had gone into the boudoir of one of the leaders of the fashions of Jerusalem, and taken an inventory of what he found there. Possibly we may trace the influence of the prophetess-wife of Isaiah (Isaiah 8:3), seeking to recall those of her own sex to a higher life. We note, on a smaller scale, a like teaching in the married apostle (1 Peter 3:3-4). Twenty-one distinct articles are mentioned. Their names for the most part appear to have a foreign stamp on them. Then, as at other times, luxury imported its novelties, and the women of Judah took up the fashions of those of Tyre or Damascus or Philistia. It is not without interest to compare the protests of Juvenal (Sat. vi.), Dante (Purgat. xxiii. 106-111), Chrysostom, and Savonarola against like evils. With stretched forth necks . . .—The corruption which the prophet paints showed itself then, as it has done in later times, in the adoption by the decent classes of society of the gait and glances of the harlots of alien birth (comp. Proverbs 7:9-21), with, perhaps, the difference of a certain affectation of coyness. Making a tinkling with their feet.—Small silver bells were fastened on the ankles, and so the beauties of Jerusalem carried, as it were, their music with them. The custom still exists in Syria and Arabia, though forbidden by the Koran. English nursery rhymes seem to recall a time when it was not unknown in Western Europe.

Verse 16. And wanton eyes - "And falsely setting off their eyes with paint"] Hebrew, falsifying their eyes. I take this to be the true meaning and literal rendering of the word; from שקר shakar. The Masoretes have pointed it, as if it were from שקר sakar, a different word. This arose, as I imagine, from their supposing that the word was the same with סקר sakar, Chaldee, "intueri, innuere oculis; " or that it had an affinity with the noun סיקרא sikra, which the Chaldeans, or the rabbins at least, use for stibium, the mineral which was commonly used in colouring the eyes. See Jarchi's comment on the place. Though the colouring of the eyes with stibium be not particularly here expressed, yet I suppose it to be implied; and so the Chaldee paraphrase explains it; stibio linitis oculis, "with eyes dressed with stibium." This fashion seems to have prevailed very generally among the Eastern people in ancient times; and they retain the very same to this day. Pietro delta Valle, giving a description of his wife, an Assyrian lady born in Mesopotamia, and educated at Bagdad, whom he married in that country, (Viaggi, Tom. I., Lettera 17,) says, "Her eyelashes, which are long, and, according to the custom of the East, dressed with stibium, (as we often read in the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrew women of old, Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 23:40; and in Xenophon, of Astyages the grandfather of Cyrus, and of the Medes of that time, Cyropaed. lib. i.,) give a dark, and at the same time a majestic, shade to the eyes." "Great eyes," says Sandys, Travels, p. 67, speaking of the Turkish women, "they have in principal repute; and of those the blacker they be the more amiable; insomuch that they put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder with a fine long pencil, made of a mineral, brought from the kingdom of Fez, and called Alcohole; which by the not disagreeable staining of the lids doth better set forth the whiteness of the eye; and though it be troublesome for a time, yet it comforteth the sight, and repelleth ill humours." Vis ejus (stibii) astringe ac refrigerare, principalis autem circa oculos; namque ideo etiam plerique Platyophthalmon id appellavere, quoniam in calliblepharis mulierum dilatat oculos; et fluxiones inhibet oculorum exulcerationesque. "It is astringent in its virtue, and refrigerant, and to be chiefly employed about the eyes, and it is called Platyophthalmon, for being put into those ointments with which women beautify their eyes, it dilates them, removes defluxions, and heals any ulcerations that may be about the eyelids." - Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 6. Ille supercilium madida fuligine tactum Obliqua producit acu, pingitque trementes Attollens oculos Juv. Sat. ii. 93. One his eyebrows, tinged with black soot, Lengthens with an oblique bodkin, and paints, Lifting up his winking eyes. "But none of those [Moorish] ladies," says Dr. Shaw, Travels, p.

16. daughters of Zion] The “haughtiness” of the daughters of Zion is displayed in their gestures as they walk abroad. They walk with outstretched neck, and ogling with their eyes; tripping along they go, and tinkling with their feet. The reference in the last words is to the jingling sound of the anklets (Isaiah 3:18) and the short chain uniting them (Isaiah 3:20); the latter also produced the tripping gait mentioned in the previous clause.

Moreover, the Lord saith - In the previous parts of this prophecy, the prophet had rebuked the princes, magistrates, and the people generally.

16. The course of thought which had been interrupted at Isaiah 3:12 is here resumed. Moreover the Lord saith — In addition to what he had already said, as reasons for divine judgment yet to come on Judah and Jerusalem.