Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.
Take the millstones - like the querns or hand-mills found in this country before the invention of water-mills and wind-mills; a convex stone, made by the hand to turn in a concave stone fitted to receive it, the grain being ground between them: the office of a female slave in the East; most degrading (Job 31:10; Matthew 24:41).
Uncover thy locks - `take off thy veil' (tsamateek, from tsaamam, to veil). So the Septuagint and Syriac (Horsley): perhaps the removal of the plaited hair worn round the woman's temples is included; it, too, is a covering (1 Corinthians 11:15); to remove it and the veil is the badge of the lowest female degradation; in the East the head is the seat of female modesty; the face of a woman is seldom, the whole head never almost, seen bare (note, Isaiah 22:8).
Make bare the leg. Gesenius translates, 'lift up (literally, uncover; as in lifting up the train the leg is Make bare the leg. Gesenius translates, 'lift up (literally, uncover; as in lifting up the train the leg is uncovered) thy flowing train' ( shobel (H7640), from shaabal, to flow). In Mesopotamia, women of low rank, as occasion requires, wade across the rivers with stripped legs, or else entirely put off their garments and swim across. 'Exchange thy rich, loose, queenly robe, for the most abject condition, that of one going to and fro through rivers as a slave, to draw water,' etc. (cf. Isaiah 20:2.) The English version is quite as well supported, and forms a good gradation-first, "make bare the leg," next, when getting further into the river, "uncover the thigh."
Uncover the thigh - gather up the robe, so as to wade across.