Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 3:16

"Moreover Jehovah said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet;" — Isaiah 3:16 (ASV)

Because the daughters of Zion ... — From the princes that worked evil, Isaiah turns to their wives, sisters, and concubines, who were showing themselves degenerate daughters of Sarah and Rebecca. A similar denunciation meets us in Isaiah 32:9-12, but this one is without parallel in the minuteness of its detail. It is as though the prophet had gone into the boudoir of one of the leaders of fashion in Jerusalem and taken an inventory of what he found there. Perhaps we can trace the influence of Isaiah's prophetess-wife (Isaiah 8:3), seeking to recall those of her own sex to a higher life.

We note, on a smaller scale, a similar teaching from the married apostle (1 Peter 3:3–4). Twenty-one distinct articles are mentioned. Their names, for the most part, appear to have a foreign character. Then, as at other times, luxury imported its novelties, and the women of Judah adopted the fashions of those from Tyre, Damascus, or Philistia. It is not without interest to compare the protests of Juvenal (Sat. VI), Dante (Purg. XXIII.106-111), Chrysostom, and Savonarola against similar evils.

With stretched forth necks ... — The corruption which the prophet paints showed itself then, as it has in later times, in the decent classes of society adopting the gait and glances of foreign harlots , with, perhaps, the difference of a certain affectation of coyness.

Making a tinkling with their feet. — Small silver bells were fastened to their ankles, and so the beauties of Jerusalem carried, as it were, their music with them. The custom still exists in Syria and Arabia, though forbidden by the Koran. English nursery rhymes seem to recall a time when it was not unknown in Western Europe.