Isaiah 47:2

2 Take millstones and grind flour; take off your veil. Lift up your skirts, bare your legs, and wade through the streams.

Isaiah 47:2 in Other Translations

2 Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.

2 Take the millstones and grind flour, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.

2 Take heavy millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, and strip off your robe. Expose yourself to public view.

2 Get a job, any old job: Clean gutters, scrub toilets. Hock your gowns and scarves, put on overalls - the party's over.

2 Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.

2 Take millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil. Take off your skirt. Uncover your legs, and cross the river.

2 Take millstones and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off [your] skirt, bare your thigh, wade through the streams.

2 Get millstones and grind some flour like a female slave. Take your veil off. Lift your skirts up. Make your legs bare. Wade through the streams.

Isaiah 47:2 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 47:2

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 ) ( 12:29 ) ( Judges 16:21 ) . 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.''

Isaiah 47:2 In-Context

1 “Go down, sit in the dust, Virgin Daughter Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, queen city of the Babylonians.No more will you be called tender or delicate.

2 Take millstones and grind flour; take off your veil. Lift up your skirts, bare your legs, and wade through the streams.

3 Your nakedness will be exposed and your shame uncovered. I will take vengeance; I will spare no one.”

4 Our Redeemer—the LORD Almighty is his name— is the Holy One of Israel.

5 “Sit in silence, go into darkness, queen city of the Babylonians; no more will you be called queen of kingdoms.

Cross References

• 1. Exodus 11:5; Matthew 24:41
• 2. S Judges 16:21
• 3. S Genesis 24:65
• 4. S Isaiah 32:11