the Week of Proper 22 / Ordinary 27
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Read the Bible
King James Version
Isaiah 47:2
Bible Study Resources
Concordances:
- Nave'sDictionaries:
- AmericanEncyclopedias:
- InternationalParallel Translations
Take the millstones and grind flour.Uncover your veil, strip off the skirt,Uncover the leg, cross the rivers.
"Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, Uncover the leg, cross the rivers.
Bryng foorth the querne and grinde meale, vntrusse thy broydred heere, put of thy shoes, make bare thy knees, and wade thorowe the water riuers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove thy veil, lift up the train, uncover the leg, pass over rivers:
Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, Take off the skirt, Uncover the thigh, Pass through the rivers.
Take millstones and grind meal; uncover your veil; strip off the skirt; uncover the leg; pass over rivers.
Get the millstones ready and grind the grain into flour. Take off your veil and fancy clothes. Lift your skirt and get ready to cross the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take the milstones and grinde meale, vncouer thy lockes: make bare the legge: vncouer the thigh, passe ouer the riuers.
Thou shalt bringe forth the querne, & grynede meel, put downe thy stomacher, make bare thy knees, and shalt wade thorow the water ryuers.
"Take millstones [as a female slave does] and grind meal; Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, Uncover the leg, cross the rivers [at the command of your captors].
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take the crushing-stones and get the meal crushed: take off your veil, put away your robe, let your legs be uncovered, go through the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.
You must use large stones to grind grain into flour. Remove your veil and your nice skirts. Uncover your legs and cross the rivers.
Pick up millstones and grind flour! Remove your veil, strip off your skirt, expose your legs, cross the streams!
Start grinding grain! Take off your veil. Strip off your fancy clothes and cross over rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; take off your veil, strip off your skirt, uncover your legs, wade through the streams.
Take the mill stones, and grinde meale: loose thy lockes: make bare the feete: vncouer the legge, and passe through the floods.
Take the millstone and grind flour; remove your veil, cut off your white hair, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take heavy millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, and strip off your robe. Expose yourself to public view.
Take the heavy stones and grind grain. Take off your face-covering and your clothing. Take the covering off your legs, and cross the rivers.
Take a millstone, grind meal: remove thy veil, uncover thy white hairs, make bare the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take the millstones, and grind meal: remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil, strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, wade through the streams.
Take the millstones and grind meal, remove your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.
Take millstones, and grind meal, - Put back thy veil - tuck up thy train Bare the leg, wade through streams:
Take a millstone and grind meal: uncover thy shame, strip thy shoulder, make bare thy legs, pass over the rivers.
Take the pair of mill stones and grind flour! Uncover your veil, strip off your skirt, uncover your thigh, pass through the rivers!
Take the millstones and grind flour, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.
"Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, Uncover the leg, cross the rivers.
Turn the millstone! Grind the flour! Off with your veil! Strip off your fine clothes! Lift up your skirts to cross the streams!
Take millstones and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, wade through the streams.
Take thou a queerne stoon, and grynde thou mele; make thou nakid thi filthe, diskeuere the schuldur, schewe the hippis, passe thou floodis.
Take the millstones and grind meal, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.
Take millstones, and grind flour, Remove thy veil, draw up the skirt, Uncover the leg, pass over the floods.
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
the millstones: Exodus 11:5, Judges 16:21, Job 31:10, Jeremiah 27:7, Lamentations 5:13, Matthew 24:41, Luke 17:35
make bare: Isaiah 3:17, Isaiah 20:4, Jeremiah 13:22, Jeremiah 13:26, Ezekiel 16:37-39, Hosea 2:3, Micah 1:11, Nahum 3:5, Nahum 3:6
Reciprocal: 2 Samuel 10:4 - cut off 1 Chronicles 19:4 - and cut Isaiah 23:7 - her own Revelation 18:7 - much she
Cross-References
And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh.
Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
Gill's Notes on the Bible
Take the millstones, and grind meal,.... Foretelling that the Chaldeans should be taken captives, and used as such, and sent to prison houses, where they should turn the mill, and grind corn into meal; a very servile work, and which used to be done by captives and slaves, even by female ones, Exodus 11:5. The Targum is,
"go into servitude;''
of which this was a sign:
uncover thy locks: the attire and dress of the head, by which the locks were bound up and kept together; but being taken off, would hang loose, and be dishevelled, as in captives and mourners. The Targum is,
"uncover the glory of thy kingdom:''
make bare the leg; or the shoulder, as the Vulgate Latin version, to be scourged by the Persians:
uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers: they are bid to tuck up their clothes so high, that they might pass over the rivers which lay between them and Persia, whither they were carried captives. The Targum is,
"thy princes are broken, the people of their army are scattered, they pass away as the waters of the river.''
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Take the millstones, and grind meal - The design of this is plain. Babylon, that had been regarded as a delicately-trained female, was to be reduced to the lowest condition of poverty and wretchedness - represented here by being compelled to perform the most menial and laborious offices, and submitting to the deepest disgrace and ignominy. There is an allusion here to the custom of grinding in the East. The mills which were there commonly used, and which are also extensively used to this day, consisted of two stones, of which the lower one was convex on the upper side, and the upper one was concave on thee lower side, so that they fitted into each other. The hole for receiving the grain was in the center of the upper stone, and in the process of grinding the lower one was fixed, and the upper one was turned round, usually by two women (see Matthew 24:41), with considerable velocity by means of a handle. Watermills were not invented until a little before the time of Augustus Caesar; and windmills long after. The custom of using handmills is the primitive custom everywhere, and they are still in use in some parts of Scotland, and generally in the East. (See Mr. Pennant’s “Tour to the Hebrides,” and the Oriental travelers generally. Grinding was usually performed by the women, though it was often regarded as the work of slaves. It was often inflicted on slaves as a punishment.
Molendum in pistrino; vapulandum; habendae compedes.
Terent. Phormio ii. 1. 19.
In the East it was the usual work of female slaves see (Exodus 11:5, in the Septuagint) ‘Women alone are employed to grind their corn.’ (Shaw, “Algiers and Tunis,” p. 297) ‘They are the female slaves that are generally employed in the East at those handmills. It is extremely laborious, and esteemed the lowest employment in the house.’ (Sir John Chardin, Harmer’s Obs. i. 153) Compare Lowth, and Gesen. “Commentary uber Isaiah.” This idea of its being a low employment is expressed by Job 31:10 : ‘Let my wife grind unto another.’ The idea of its being a most humble and laborious employment was long since exhibited by Homer:
A woman next, then laboring at the mill,
Hard by, where all his numerous mills he kept.
Gave him the sign propitious from within.
twelve damsels toiled to turn them, day by day
Meal grinding, some of barley, some of wheat,
Marrow of man The rest (their portion ground)
All slept, one only from her task as yet
Ceased not, for she was feeblest of them all;
She rested on her mill, and thus pronounced:
‘Jove, Father, Governor, of heaven and earth!
‘O grant the prayer
Of a poor bond-woman. Appoint their feast,
This day the last, that in Ulysses’ house,
The suitors shall enjoy, for whom I drudge,
Grinding, to weariness of heart and limb,
Meal for their use.’
Cowper
The sense here is, that Babylon should be reduced to the lowest state, like that of reducing a female delicately and tenderly reared, to the hard and laborious condition of working the handmill - the usual work of slaves.
Uncover thy locks - Gesenius renders this, ‘Raise thy veil.’ The word used here (צמה tsamâh) is rendered ‘locks,’ in Song of Solomon 4:1, Song of Solomon 4:3; Song of Solomon 6:7, as well as here. It occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Gesenius derives it from צמם tsāmam, “to braid, to plaid,” and then “to bind fast,” as a veil; to veil. Jerome renders it, Denuda turpetudinem tuam. The Septuagint renders it, Τὸ κατακάλυμμα σου To katakalumma sou - ‘Thy veil.’ The Syriac also renders it, ‘Thy veil.’ The Chaldee has paraphrased the whole verse thus: ‘Go into servitude; reveal the glory of thy kingdom. Broken are thy princes; dispersed are the people of thy host; they have gone into captivity like the waters of a river.’ Jarchi says, that the word used here (צמה tsamâh) denotes whatever is bound up, or tied together Kimchi says that it means the hair, which a woman disposes around her temples over her face, and which she covers with a veil, deeming it an ornament; but that when a female goes into captivity this is removed, as a sign of an abject condition.
It properly means that which is plaited, or gathered together; and it may refer either to the hair so plaited as an ornament, or a covering for the head and face (compare the note at 1 Corinthians 11:15); or it may denote a veil. To remove either would be regarded as disgraceful. It is known that oriental females pay great attention to their hair, and also that it is a universal custom to wear a close veil. To remove either, and to leave the head bare, or the face exposed, was deemed highly humiliating and dishonorable (see the notes at Isaiah 3:24). ‘The head,’ says the Editor of the “Pictorial Bible,” ‘is the seat of female modesty in the East; and no woman allows her head to be seen bare. In our traveling experience, we saw the faces of very many women, but never the bare head of any except one - a female servant, whose face we were in the constant habit of seeing, and whom we accidentally surprised while dressing her hair. The perfect consternation, and deep sense of humiliation which she expressed on that occasion, could not easily be forgotten, and furnish a most striking illustration of the present text.’
Make bare the leg - In the interpretation of this, also, commentators vary. Jerome renders it, “Discoopteri humerum” - ‘Uncover the shoulder.’ The Septuagint, Ἀνακάλυψαι τὰς πολιάς Anakalupsai tas polias - ‘Uncover thy gray locks.’ The Syriac, ‘Cut off thy hoary hairs.’ Jarchi and Kimchi suppose it means, ‘Remove the waters from the paths, so that they might pass over them.’ The word used here (שׁבל shobel), is derived from שׁבל shâbal, “to go; to go up, to rise; to grow; to flow copiously.” Hence, the noun in its various forms means a path Psalms 77:19; Jeremiah 18:15; ears of corn, שׁבלת shibbôleth Genesis 41:5, Judges 12:6; Ruth 2:2; Job 24:24; Isaiah 17:5; floods Psalms 69:15; branches Zechariah 4:12. In no place has it the certain signification of a leg; but it rather refers to that which flows: flows copiously; and probably here means the train of a robe (Gesenius, and Rosenmuller): and the expression means ‘uncover, or make bare the train;’ that is, lift it up, as would be necessary in passing through a stream, so that the leg would be made bare. The Orientals, as is well known, wore a long, loose, flowing robe, and in passing through waters, it would be necessary to lift, or gather it up, so that the legs would be bare. The idea is, that she who had sat as a queen, and who had been clad in the rich, loose, and flowing robe which those usually wore who were in the most elevated ranks of life, would now be compelled to leave the seat of magnificence, and in such a manner as to be subject to the deepest shame and disgrace.
Uncover the thigh - By collecting, and gathering up the train of the robe, so as to pass through the streams.
Pass over the rivers - Hebrew, ‘Pass the rivers;’ that is, by wading, or fording them. This image is taken from the fact that Babylon was surrounded by many artificial rivers or streams, and that one in passing from it would be compelled to ford many of them. It does not mean that the population of Babylon would be removed into captivity by the conquerors - for there is no evidence that this was done; but the image is that of Babylon, represented as a delicately-reared and magnificently attired female, compelled to ford the streams. The idea is, that the power and magnificence of the city would be transferred to other places. Rosenmuller remarks that it is common in the countries bordering on the Tigris and the Euphrates, for females of bumble rank to ford the streams, or even to swim across them.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
Verse Isaiah 47:2. Take the millstones, and grind meal - "Take the mill, and grind corn"] It was the work of slaves to grind the corn. They used hand-mills: water-mills were not invented till a little before the time of Augustus, (see the Greek epigram of Antipater, which seems to celebrate it as a new invention, Anthol. Cephalae, 653;) wind-mills, not until long after. It was not only the work of slaves, but the hardest work; and often inflicted upon them as a severe punishment: -
Molendum in pistrino; vapulandum; habendae compedes.
TERENT. Phorm. ii. 1. 19.
Hominem pistrino dignum.
Id. Heaut. iii. 2. 19.
To grind in the mill, to be scourged, to be put in the stocks, were punishments for slaves. Hence a delinquent was said to be a man worthy of the mill. The tread-mill, now in use in England, is a revival of this ancient usage. But in the east grinding was the work of the female slaves. See Exodus 11:5; Exodus 12:29, (in the version of the Septuagint; Matthew 24:41; Homer, Odyss. xx. 105-108. And it is the same to this day. "Women alone are employed to grind their corn;" Shaw's Algiers and Tunis, p. 287. "They are the female slaves, that are generally employed in the east at those hand-mills for grinding corn; it is extremely laborious, and esteemed the lowest employment in the house;" Sir J. Chardin, Harmer's Observ. i., p. 153. The words denote that state of captivity to which the Babylonians should be reduced.
Make bare the leg, uncover the thigh — This is repeatedly seen in Bengal, where there are few bridges, and both sexes, having neither shoes nor stockings, truss up their loose garments, and walk across, where the waters are not deep. In the deeper water they are obliged to truss very high, to which there seems a reference in the third verse: Thy nakedness shall be uncovered.
