Isaiah 3:16

And wanton eyes "And falsely setting off their eyes with paint" - Hebrew, falsifying their eyes. I take this to be the true meaning and literal rendering of the word; from שקר shakar . The Masoretes have pointed it, as if it were from שקר sakar , a different word. This arose, as I imagine, from their supposing that the word was the same with סקר sakar , Chaldee, "intueri, innuere oculis;" or that it had an affinity with the noun סיקרא sikra , which the Chaldeans, or the rabbins at least, use for stibium, the mineral which was commonly used in colouring the eyes. See Jarchi's comment on the place. Though the colouring of the eyes with stibium be not particularly here expressed, yet I suppose it to be implied; and so the Chaldee paraphrase explains it; stibio linitis oculis, "with eyes dressed with stibium." This fashion seems to have prevailed very generally among the Eastern people in ancient times; and they retain the very same to this day.

Pietro delta Valle, giving a description of his wife, an Assyrian lady born in Mesopotamia, and educated at Baghdad, whom he married in that country, (Viaggi, Tom. I., Lettera 17), says, "Her eyelashes, which are long, and, according to the custom of the East, dressed with stibium, (as we often read in the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrew women of old, Jeremiah 4:30 ; Ezekiel 23:40 ; and in Xenophon, of Astyages the grandfather of Cyrus, and of the Medes of that time, Cyropaed. lib. i.), give a dark, and at the same time a majestic, shade to the eyes." "Great eyes," says Sandys, Travels, p. 67, speaking of the Turkish women, "they have in principal repute; and of those the blacker they be the more amiable; insomuch that they put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder with a fine long pencil, made of a mineral, brought from the kingdom of Fez, and called Alcohole; which by the not disagreeable staining of the lids doth better set forth the whiteness of the eye; and though it be troublesome for a time, yet it comforteth the sight, and repelleth ill humours." Vis ejus (stibii) astringe ac refrigerare, principalis autem circa oculos; namque ideo etiam plerique Platyophthalmon id appellavere, quoniam in calliblepharis mulierum dilatat oculos; et fluxiones inhibet oculorum exulcerationesque . "It is astringent in its virtue, and refrigerant, and to be chiefly employed about the eyes, and it is called Platyophthalmon, for being put into those ointments with which women beautify their eyes, it dilates them, removes defluxions, and heals any ulcerations that may be about the eyelids." - Pliny, Nat. Hist. 33:6.

Ille supercilium madida fuligine tactum

Obliqua producit acu, pingitque trementes

Attollens oculos