Isaiah3chapter 3

Isaiah 3:1-3

For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff opens the oracle with the plainest picture of removed support, bread and water named first as the most basic props any city needs. Verses two and three then list ten classes of leader stripped away in one breath, soldier, judge, prophet, elder, captain, counsellor, craftsman and orator together, a society losing every kind of competence at once rather than one office failing alone. The list's range, from the man of war to the cunning artificer, argues that no single reform could answer a judgment this wide.

Isaiah 3:4-7

And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them names the judgment that follows the removed leadership of the previous verses, incompetent rule rather than no rule at all. The child behaving proudly against the ancient and the base against the honourable pictures a complete reversal of the respect a functioning society depends on, and verse six shows the result, a man seizing his own brother by the clothes on his back and begging him to rule, because there is simply no one qualified left standing. Verse seven's refusal, I will not be an healer, for in my house is neither bread nor clothing, shows even that desperate offer turned down, no one willing to take responsibility for a ruin this complete.

Isaiah 3:8-9

For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen states the judgment as accomplished fact before naming its cause, their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory, sin aimed directly at the God who sees it. Verse nine names the manner of the sin rather than only its content, the shew of their countenance doth witness against them, guilt worn openly on the face with no attempt to conceal it. They declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not returns to the Sodom comparison chapter one had already used at 1:9-10, and the woe unto their soul that follows opens the first of the chapter's woe sayings.

Isaiah 3:10-11

Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him breaks the oracle of judgment with a couplet of plain assurance, the righteous eating the fruit of their own doings even while the nation around them falls. Verse eleven states the same principle in reverse, woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him, the two verses together insisting that the coming ruin is not blind but exactly proportioned to conduct. The older commentators read the pair as answering an unspoken question, whether a general judgment sweeps away the innocent with the guilty, and the text answers that it does not.

Isaiah 3:12

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them continues the picture opened at verse four, where children were given as princes and babes to rule, and the older commentators read the pairing as one image of collapsed and inexperienced leadership rather than as a statement about women's fitness to lead in general. The complaint immediately named is the actual crime, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths, misleading guidance being the fault the verse indicts rather than youth or gender as such. The verse belongs to the specific crisis this oracle describes, a nation that has lost every class of competent leader named at verses two and three.

Isaiah 3:13-15

The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people resumes the courtroom scene chapter one opened, the Lord no longer only speaking through the prophet but standing as both witness and judge. Verse fourteen names the accused directly, the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof, and states the specific charge, ye have eaten up the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses, leaders who were meant to tend the vineyard instead stripping it for themselves. Verse fifteen's question, what mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor, makes the charge concrete and personal, oppression pictured as a face pressed down rather than an abstract economic wrong.

Isaiah 3:16

Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty turns the oracle from Jerusalem's leaders to its wealthy women, the same charge of pride running through both, dress and posture now standing in for the misused power of verses thirteen through fifteen. Stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go describe a deliberate, studied gait, and a tinkling with their feet points to the ankle ornaments the catalogue beginning in verse eighteen will name outright. The pride condemned is not beauty itself but beauty made into a performance of status while the poor named just verses earlier have their faces ground into the dust.

Isaiah 3:17-23

Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion turns judgment onto the very finery just described, and verses eighteen through twenty three list what will be taken away, more than twenty items of ancient Judean dress and adornment named by their own words, anklets, headbands and crescent ornaments, chains and bracelets and veils, bonnets, leg ornaments and perfume boxes, rings and nose jewels, festive robes, mantles, mirrors and fine linen. The list is the fullest catalogue of women's material culture in the whole book, and the older commentators treat it as real inventory of the period's fashion rather than invented excess, each item identifiable in the dress of the ancient Near East. Its very length is the point of the judgment, an entire wardrobe built for display removed piece by piece, nothing held back.

Isaiah 3:24

And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink states the judgment as a formula of exact reversal, five pairs in one verse, sweet smell for stink, a girdle for a rent, well set hair for baldness, a stomacher for sackcloth, and beauty for a mark some read as burning and others as a brand. Each pair takes something named in the catalogue just given and turns it into its opposite, the perfume and ornament of verses eighteen through twenty three answered item for item. The rhetorical shape argues that the judgment fits the specific sin, vanity undone by exactly the means vanity had used.

Isaiah 3:25-26

Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war widens the judgment from ornament and dress to the loss of the city's own defenders, the daughters left without the husbands the finery of the previous verses was meant to attract. Her gates shall lament and mourn pictures the very entrances of the city grieving as mourners would, the city itself personified as a widow. She being desolate shall sit upon the ground closes the chapter in the posture ancient mourning took, sitting in the dust, and the picture continues directly into chapter four's scene of seven women left to one man.