Bible Strands
Isaiah 32:11
Shudder, you ladies of leisure; tremble, you daughters of complacency. Strip yourselves bare and put sackcloth around your waists.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet Isaiah addresses secure, complacent women in Judah immediately before a prophesied year of agricultural collapse and national reckoning.
The words — חִרְדוּ (chir.Du) translates literally as "tremble," and שַֽׁאֲנַנּ֔וֹת (sha.'a.na.Not) denotes "carefree women," establishing the contrast between present complacency and imminent terror.
The thread — This command to strip and mourn parallels the mourning signs in Isaiah 3:24 and the nakedness of judgment in Deuteronomy 28:48, while the warning to tremble echoes the terror of the Lord described in Isaiah 2:19.
Why it lands — The text commands the complacent to abandon their security and adopt mourning garb as a direct, unadorned response to impending divine judgment.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 3:24 Instead of fragrance there will be a stench; instead of a belt, a rope; instead of styled hair, baldness; instead of fine clothing, sackcloth; instead of beauty, shame.
- Deuteronomy 28:48 you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
- Isaiah 2:19 Men will flee to caves in the rocks and holes in the ground, away from the terror of the LORD and from the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to shake the earth.
- Isaiah 2:21 They will flee to caverns in the rocks and crevices in the cliffs, away from the terror of the LORD and from the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to shake the earth.
- Isaiah 15:3 In its streets they wear sackcloth; on the rooftops and in the public squares they all wail, falling down weeping.
- Isaiah 20:4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, naked and barefoot, with bared buttocks—to Egypt’s shame.
- Isaiah 22:4 Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
- Isaiah 33:14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling grips the ungodly: “Who of us can dwell with a consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting flames?”
- Isaiah 47:1 “Go down and sit in the dust, O Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, O Daughter of the Chaldeans! For you will no longer be called tender or delicate.
- Jeremiah 4:8 So put on sackcloth, mourn and wail, for the fierce anger of the LORD has not turned away from us.”