Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.
Parallel translations
- WEB Take the millstones, and grind flour. Remove your veil, lift up your skirt, uncover your legs, and wade through the rivers.
- BSB Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.
- NKJV Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, Take off the skirt, Uncover the thigh, Pass through the rivers.
- NASB “Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, Uncover the leg, cross the rivers.
- NLT Take heavy millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, and strip off your robe. Expose yourself to public view.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Babylon is commanded to take up a slave's labor — grinding grain, exposed and degraded. Her glory is reduced to servitude.
Overview
The proud queen-city is pictured doing the menial, shameful work of a captive slave woman, grinding at the millstone and wading through rivers in disgrace. The imagery dramatizes her total reversal of fortune. God's judgment strips away every pretension of human empire.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Judg 16:21But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.
- Isa 20:4So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
- Exod 11:5And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.
- Matt 24:41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
- Nah 3:5–6Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame.
- Job 31:10Then let my wife grind unto another, and let others bow down upon her.
- Hos 2:3Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.
- Isa 32:11Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.
- Luke 17:35Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
- Ezek 16:37–39Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness.
- Gen 24:65For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master: therefore she took a vail, and covered herself.
- Isa 3:17Therefore the LORD will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
- Mic 1:11Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir, having thy shame naked: the inhabitant of Zaanan came not forth in the mourning of Bethezel; he shall receive of you his standing.
- Jer 13:22And if thou say in thine heart, Wherefore come these things upon me? For the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare.
- Lam 5:13They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
- Jer 13:26Therefore will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy shame may appear.
- Jer 27:7And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him.
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Christ at the center
Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).
How Isaiah 47:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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