King James Bible
"Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing."
Isaiah emphasizes God's incomparable sovereignty by depicting entire nations as merely a single drop hanging from a bucket—insignificant and easily overlooked. This imagery confronts the exiled Israelites' fear of powerful empires like Babylon, reminding them that these seemingly mighty forces are negligible before God. The prophet intensifies the comparison by likening nations to dust particles on merchant scales—so light they don't affect measurements. In ancient commerce, such dust was brushed away as irrelevant, underscoring how human political powers cannot tip the scales of God's purposes. Even the most remote and seemingly unmovable landmasses—the islands and coastlands representing the furthest reaches of the known world—are effortlessly lifted by God. This climactic image completes the passage's message: no earthly power, whether near or distant, poses any challenge to the Creator's absolute dominion.