Isaiah 3:16-24

The daughters of Zion are haughty

Wanton eyes

(“twinkling with the eyes”):--Compare the Talmudic witticism, “God did not create the woman out of Adam’s ear, lest she might become an eavesdropper; nor out of Adam’s eye, lest she might become a winker.

” (F. Delitzsch.)

The “wanton” eyes

The “wanton” eyes of A.V., or the “ogling” eyes of others, introduces an idea foreign to the connection. There seems no reference to immorality. It is the pride of beauty and attire, which has no mind for the Ruler above, which is punished with all that makes loathsome. (A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)

A mincing gait

The rendering should rather be “tripping”; for only such little steps can they take, owing to their pace chains, which join together the costly foot rings that were placed above the ankle. With these pace chains, which perhaps even then as now, were sometimes provided with little bells, they make a tinkling sound, clinking the ankle ornaments, by placing the feet in such a way as to make these ankle rings strike one another. (F. Delitzsch.)

Pride of beauty and attire reproved

The prophet’s business was to show all sorts of people what they had contributed to the national guilt, and what share they must expect in the national judgments that were coming. Here he reproves and warns the daughters of Zion, tells the ladies of their faults.

I. THE SIN CHARGED UPON THE DAUGHTERS OF ZION. The prophet expressly voucheth God’s Authority for what he said, lest it should be thought it was unbecoming him to take notice of such things, and should be ill resented by the ladies. The Lord saith it. Whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, let them know that God takes notice of, and is much displeased with, the folly and vanity of proud women; and His law takes cognisance even of their dress Such a nice affected mien is not only a force upon that which is natural, and ridiculous before men of sense, but, as it is an evidence of a vain mind, it is offensive to God. And two things aggravated it here--

1. That these were the daughters of Zion--the holy mountain--who should have carried themselves with the gravity that becomes women professing godliness.

2. That it should seem by the connection they were the wives and daughters of the princes who spoiled and oppressed the poor (Isaiah 3:14), that they might maintain this pride and luxury of their families.

II. THE PUNISHMENTS THREATENED FOR THIS SIN, and they answer the sin as face answers to face in a glass (Isaiah 3:17).

1. They “walked with stretched forth necks.” But God “will smite with a scab the crown of their head,” which shall lower their crests, and make them ashamed to show their heads, being obliged by it to cut off their hair.

2. They cared not what they laid out in furnishing themselves with great variety of fine clothes; but God will reduce them to such poverty and distress that they should not have clothes sufficient to cover their nakedness.

3. They were extremely fond and proud of their ornaments; but God will strip them of those ornaments, when their houses shall be plundered, their treasures rifled, and they themselves led into captivity.

4. They were very nice and curious about their clothes, but God would make those bodies of theirs a reproach and burden to them (Isaiah 3:24).

5. They designed by these ornaments to charm the gentlemen, and win their affections, but there shall be none to be charmed by them (Isaiah 3:25). (Matthew Henry.)

A Jerusalem fashion plate

This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. (T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.)

Comely clothing natural

That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of the first wardrobe in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far as our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with golden sunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see the apple orchards of the spring, and the pageantry of the autumnal forests, I come to the conclusion that if Nature ever does join the Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a fern ear or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs, does it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it might go in so quickly? (T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.)

Costume and morals

1. Much of the worldly costume of our time is the cause of the temporal and eternal ruin of a multitude of men.

2. Extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian almsgiving.

3. Is distraction to public worship.

4. Belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged, or they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on which they constantly dwell.

5. It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. You will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the Christian God. (T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.)

God-defying extravagance of modern society

1. This wholesale extravagance accounts for a great deal of depression in national finances. Aggregates are made up of units, and so long as one-half of the people of this country are in debt to the other half, you cannot have a healthy financial condition.

2. The widespread extravagance accounts for much of the crime. It is the source of many abscondings, bankruptcies, defalcations, and knaveries.

3. It also accounts for much of the pauperism in the country. Who are the individuals and the families who are thrown on your charity? Who has sinned against them so that they suffer? It is often the case that their parents, or their grandparents, had all luxuries, lived everything up, more than lived everything up, and then died, leaving their families in want. (T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.)

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