Isaiah 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD announces that he is taking away from Jerusalem and Judah both their food and water and every kind of capable leader, leaving inexperienced rulers and a society where people prey on one another. He then brings a formal charge against the elders and officials for stripping the poor, and against the proud daughters of Zion, whose fine clothes and jewelry will be exchanged for sores, rough mourning cloth, and baldness. The chapter closes with the men of the city falling in battle and the city itself sitting on the ground in grief.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The Lord, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah both support and supply.
   • He is taking away the whole supply of bread.
   • He is taking away the whole supply of water.
2. 3:2
   • Among those taken away is the mighty man.
   • Among those taken away is the man of war.
   • Among those taken away is the judge.
   • Among those taken away is the prophet.
   • Among those taken away is the diviner.
   • Among those taken away is the elder.
3. 3:3
   • Among those taken away is the commander of fifty.
   • Among those taken away is the man of honored standing.
   • Among those taken away is the counselor.
   • Among those taken away is the skilled practitioner of crafts, which may mean a craftsman or a magician.
   • Among those taken away is the one expert in whispered charms.
4. 3:4
   • The LORD says he will make boys their princes.
   • The LORD says capricious children will rule over them.
5. 3:5
   • The people will oppress one another.
   • Each man will be against another man.
   • Each man will be against his neighbor.
   • The young will act insolently against the old.
   • The lightly esteemed will act insolently against the honored.
6. 3:6
   • A man will seize his brother in his father's house.
   • He will say to him that he has a cloak.
   • He will say to him: you be our ruler.
   • He will say: let this heap of ruin be under your hand.
7. 3:7
   • In that day the man will lift up his voice and declare.
   • He says he will not be a binder of wounds.
   • He says there is no bread in his house.
   • He says there is no clothing in his house.
   • He says they must not make him a ruler of the people.
8. 3:8
   • Jerusalem has stumbled.
   • Judah has fallen.
   • Their tongue is against the LORD.
   • Their deeds are against the LORD.
   • Their speech and deeds defy the eyes of his glory.
9. 3:9
   • The look of their faces testifies against them.
   • They proclaim their sin like Sodom.
   • They do not hide their sin.
   • Woe is pronounced on their soul.
   • They have brought evil upon themselves.
10. 3:10
    • Say to the righteous that it will be well with him.
    • The righteous will eat the fruit of their deeds.
11. 3:11
    • Woe is pronounced on the wicked.
    • It will be ill with the wicked.
    • The recompense of his hands will be done to him.
12. 3:12
    • Children are the oppressors of the LORD's people.
    • Women rule over the LORD's people.
    • Those who guide the LORD's people lead them astray.
    • They have swallowed up the way of their paths.
13. 3:13
    • The LORD takes his stand to contend.
    • He stands to judge peoples.
14. 3:14
    • The LORD will enter into judgment with the elders of his people.
    • The LORD will enter into judgment with its princes.
    • The LORD says they have consumed the vineyard.
    • The LORD says the plunder taken from the poor is in their houses.
15. 3:15
    • The LORD asks what they mean by crushing his people.
    • The LORD asks what they mean by grinding the faces of the poor.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD of hosts.
16. 3:16
    • The LORD says the daughters of Zion are haughty.
    • They walk with outstretched necks.
    • They walk with wanton, ogling eyes.
    • They go with mincing, tripping steps.
    • They jingle ornaments with their feet.
17. 3:17
    • The Lord will strike the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion with scab.
    • The LORD will lay bare their private parts, which may mean their foreheads or their genitals.
18. 3:18
    • In that day the Lord will take away their finery.
    • He will take away their anklets.
    • He will take away their headbands.
    • He will take away their crescent ornaments.
19. 3:19
    • He will take away their pendant earrings.
    • He will take away their bracelets.
    • He will take away their veils.
20. 3:20
    • He will take away their headdresses.
    • He will take away their ankle chains.
    • He will take away their sashes.
    • He will take away their perfume boxes.
    • He will take away their amulets.
21. 3:21
    • He will take away their rings.
    • He will take away their nose rings.
22. 3:22
    • He will take away their festal robes.
    • He will take away their mantles.
    • He will take away their cloaks.
    • He will take away their purses.
23. 3:23
    • He will take away their mirrors.
    • He will take away their linen garments.
    • He will take away their turbans.
    • He will take away their shawls.
24. 3:24
    • Instead of perfume there will be rottenness and stench.
    • Instead of a sash there will be a rope.
    • Instead of well-set hair there will be baldness.
    • Instead of a rich robe there will be a girding of sackcloth.
    • There will be burning instead of beauty.
25. 3:25
    • Your men will fall by the sword.
    • Your mighty men will fall in the war.
26. 3:26
    • Her gates will lament and mourn.
    • She, stripped and emptied, will sit on the ground.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

"LORD" printed in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, which Hebrew scribes wrote but did not say aloud; "Lord" in ordinary letters is a different word meaning master. Verse 1 stacks both. "LORD of hosts" (rendered "who commands armies") is a military title: the hosts are the massed armies of heaven. Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the small southern kingdom that survived after the larger northern kingdom of Israel broke away; the two names together mean the whole country and its chief city.

3:2

The list in verses 2–3 names the people a society leans on (its soldiers, judges, religious specialists and skilled men. Removing them, not just the food and water of verse 1, is the disaster. "The ancient" in the King James does not mean something old; it means an elder, a senior man whose age gave him a voice in public decisions. The "prudent" is more literally a diviner) someone who read omens to predict events. Ancient readers would have heard him listed as a normal fixture of public life, in the same breath as the judge and the prophet.

3:3

A "captain of fifty" commanded a small standing unit of fifty men, the basic block of an army. The last two items are genuinely uncertain. The Hebrew for "cunning artificer" can mean a skilled craftsman or a skilled worker of charms, the two senses share a root, and "eloquent orator" is literally "expert in whispering," which can mean a persuasive speaker or a mutterer of spells. Translations split between the two readings. Note that "cunning" in 1611 English meant skilled, with no suggestion of trickery.

3:4

Every kind of experienced leader has just been taken away in verses 2 and 3. So all that is left to put in charge are boys with no training and no experience.

3:5

"Base" here does not mean wicked. It means low down on the social ladder, someone with no rank, money or standing.

3:6

Property passed and disputes were settled within the "father's house", the extended family or clan, several generations living as one unit. "Brother" here means a male relative of that household. Owning an outer cloak is the whole of the man's qualification: after the collapse the one relative who still has a garment on his back counts as the rich one, and so is pressed to take charge.

3:7

"Heal" pictures the nation as a wounded body and the ruler as the man who binds up its injuries, a stock image for repairing a broken society. A ruler was expected to feed and clothe his dependants from his own household stores; the man's answer is that his own house is empty, so he cannot do the job.

3:8

"To provoke the eyes of his glory" is a Hebrew idiom: God's glory is his visible, weighty presence, and to defy it in full view of his eyes is deliberate, open contempt rather than a hidden fault.

3:9

Sodom was the city in Genesis destroyed for its wickedness; by Isaiah's day its name was shorthand for evil done openly and without embarrassment. The charge is not the content of the sin but the brazenness: they advertise it rather than hiding it.

3:11

"Woe" translates a Hebrew cry that was first of all a funeral wail, the sound made over a corpse. Pronouncing it over living people announces that they are as good as dead already; it is a lament in form, an announcement of doom in force.

3:12

In a society that expected authority to rest with adult men who headed households, rule by boys and by women signaled that the normal order had come apart, the point is the collapse of the expected structure, not a judgment on the ability of either. The Hebrew is also read a second way, since the same consonants can mean "creditors" or "extortioners" rather than "children," giving "my people's oppressors deal with them like children."

3:13

This is courtroom language. The Hebrew word behind "plead" names a formal lawsuit brought against someone; God stands up as the party laying the charge and also as the judge who will rule on it. The scene runs through verse 15.

3:14

"Elders" and "princes" are the same senior men and officials removed in verses 2–3: the local leadership who heard cases in the town gate. A vineyard took years to establish and was the classic family asset, so "eaten up the vineyard" carries both senses at once, the leaders have stripped the smallholders' actual vines, and they have consumed the nation itself, which prophets often pictured as God's vineyard.

3:15

"Grind the faces" draws on the daily image of grain crushed between two millstones, the poor are the grain. The picture is of pressure applied steadily until nothing is left, not of a single act of violence.

3:16

Zion was the hill Jerusalem was built on, and the name came to stand for the city and its people; "daughters of Zion" means the women of Jerusalem. The walk described is a deliberate display: head up, eyes working the crowd, and short showy steps, ankle chains linking the two feet forced a small tripping stride and set the ankle rings ringing, so the sound announced the walker before she was seen.

3:17

Both halves of the sentence are disputed. The first names a skin disease of the scalp, scabbing or scabbing sores. The second uses a rare Hebrew word: it may mean laying the forehead bare (shaving the head, which was done to captive and slave women and reversed the styled hair of verse 24) or it may mean exposing the genitals, the standard humiliation of women taken in a captured city. Translators divide, and the King James "discover their secret parts" takes the second reading. "Discover" in 1611 English means uncover, not find out.

3:18

"Bravery" in the King James means finery or showy display, not courage. What follows in verses 18–23 is a list of about twenty-one items of women's dress and jewelry, and the exact sense of many of the Hebrew words is unknown: they occur rarely or only here, and translations differ widely. The crescents were moon-shaped amulets, a shape associated with the moon god across the ancient Near East and worn as much for protection as for looks.

3:20

The "tablets" of the King James are small containers of scent, literally "houses of breath." The last item is literally "whisperings", amulets that had a charm spoken over them, worn to ward off harm. The King James guessed "earrings."

3:21

A signet ring carried a personal seal cut into its face. Pressed into wax or clay it served as a signature, so it marked its owner as someone whose word bound property and contracts.

3:22

The "changeable suits" are clothes kept for festivals and changed into for the occasion, not everyday wear. "Crisping pins" was the King James guess at a word that elsewhere in the Bible means a bag or purse; most modern translations read it that way.

3:23

Mirrors were disks of polished bronze, not glass, the King James "glasses" means looking-glasses. Some ancient translators read the Hebrew instead as a sheer or transparent garment, and both readings are still defended.

3:24

Each pair swaps a mark of wealth for a mark of captivity or grief. A girdle was the belt or sash that gathered a robe, and a well-dressed woman's was decorated; the word replacing it is uncertain and may mean a rope, as used on prisoners, or a tear. The "stomacher" was a costly outer robe. Sackcloth was coarse dark cloth of goat hair, worn next to the skin as the standard sign of mourning or disaster. The last word is disputed: it may mean a burn or a brand (captives and slaves were sometimes branded) or it may be a rare noun meaning shame.

3:25

"Thy" is addressed to the city, spoken of throughout as a woman; her men are the citizens who would have manned the wall.

3:26

A city's gates were the space just inside the wall where courts sat, deals were struck and news was passed, the whole public life of the place. Gates that lament stand for a city with no one left in them. Sitting on the bare ground was the recognized posture of mourning and of a captive waiting to be led away, and it completes the picture of Jerusalem as a woman stripped of her finery in verses 18–23.