What Does Isaiah 3:16 Mean?
Moreover the LORD says, Because the daughters of Zion are lifted high, and walk with necks stretched out and winking eyes, walking and pattering as they go, and jingling with their feet.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:THE KEY
The word translated “haughty” carries the sense of becoming high, and the verse gives that height an outstretched neck and a choreographed walk.
THE MEANING
The daughters of Zion appear here as an image of self-elevation made bodily: necks held high, eyes turned to display, and steps arranged to sound. The verse speaks wherever the wish to be noticed turns ordinary movement into a performance of superiority. Its repeated language of walking makes the whole manner of moving part of the claim.
THE ROOT
גָּבְהוּ
gāḇəhû
GROWS FROM
גבה
gāḇah
Be high, rise, become lofty.
“lifted high” in this verse is gāḇəhû. The word translated “haughty” is built on becoming high. The verse gives that elevation a posture, an extended neck, and makes visible in the body the height the word names.
ALSO GROWS
gāḇōah: High, tall.
גָּבֹהַּ
This branch carries the same vertical sense, linking the daughters’ bodily posture with the elevation in “haughty.”
gōḇah: Height, elevation.
גֹּבַהּ
This noun makes the root’s spatial image explicit: pride presents itself as a claim to height.
תֵּלַכְנָה
tēlaḵnāh
GROWS FROM
הלך
hālaḵ
Walk, go, move along.
The verse uses forms of one verb three times: “walk,” “walking,” and “go.” English distributes the motion across different words, while Hebrew holds it under one root, making the described display feel like one continuous choreography.
ALSO GROWS
hōlēḵ: One who walks or goes.
הוֹלֵךְ
This form keeps the physical walker under the same root as the repeated movements in the verse.
halikhah: Walking, going, a course of movement.
הֲלִיכָה
This branch names movement as a sustained course, matching the verse’s continuous display.
THE PATTERN
Human self-exaltation is exposed and brought low.
Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.For everyone who lifts himself will be brought low; and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.But he gives greater favor. Therefore it says, God sets himself against those who lift themselves high, and gives favor to those made low.THE THREAD
The lifted eyes of man shall be brought low, and the heights of men shall bow down, and the LORD alone shall be lifted high in that day.The word translated “haughty” here shares the root גבה (gāḇah, “be high”) with “lofty” and “haughtiness” in Isaiah 2:11. That verse’s image of lifted eyes opens this one further: the raised gaze and neck belong to a recurring picture of human height being lowered while the LORD alone is exalted.
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