Isaiah 3:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Therefore the Lord will smite, &c. Will humble the head of the daughters of Zion; and Jehovah will expose their nakedness. Thus Bishop Lowth renders the verse, observing, that “it was the barbarous custom of the conquerors of those times to strip their captives naked, and to make them travel in that condition, exposed to the inclemency of the weather; and, which was worst of all, to the intolerable heat of the sun. But this, to the women, was the height of cruelty and indignity; and especially to such as those here described, who had indulged themselves in all manner of delicacies of living, and all the superfluities of ornamental dress; and even whose faces had hardly ever been exposed to the sight of man. This is always mentioned as the hardest part of the lot of captives. Nahum, denouncing the fate of Nineveh, paints it in very strong colours,” Nahum 3:5-6.