Isaiah 47

Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter Babylon. Sit on the ground; there is no throne for you, daughter of the Chaldeans. No one will call you soft and delicate again.

1Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

NoteBabylon is addressed throughout the chapter as a woman, the city and its empire spoken of as a queen about to be stripped and enslaved. "Virgin" here does not describe her morals; a city was called a virgin when no enemy army had ever broken into it. "Daughter of the Chaldeans" means the same city again: the Chaldeans were the people whose dynasty ruled the Babylonian empire, which had captured Jerusalem and carried its population into exile. Sitting down in the dust was what mourners and the defeated did; a queen sat on a throne, a captive sat on the ground.

2Pick up the millstones and grind grain into flour. Take off your veil, pull up your skirt, uncover your legs, and wade across the rivers.

2Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.

NoteGrinding grain at a hand mill was the daily labor of the lowest household slaves, so the picture is of a queen put to a slave's work. The rest of the verse is a captive being marched away: a respectable woman went out veiled and covered to the ankles, and pulling up the skirt to wade a river was a public humiliation. "Uncover thy locks" in the King James means uncover the hair by removing the veil.

3Your naked body will be uncovered, and your shame will be seen. I will take revenge, and I will spare no one.

3Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.

Note"I will not meet thee as a man" is obscure in the King James because the Hebrew is disputed. The words can mean "I will spare no one," "I will meet no one who can resist," or "I will accept no plea from anyone." Older readings also took it as "I will not treat you as a human being would."

4As for the one who buys us back, his name is the LORD of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel.

4As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.

Note"Redeemer" translates a Hebrew legal word, go'el: the nearest male relative who had the duty of buying a family member out of slavery, buying back land the family had lost, or avenging a killing. The point of the word is family obligation, not sentiment. "LORD of hosts" means commander of armies. Printed in small capitals, LORD stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud.

5Sit there in silence and go into the darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans. No one will call you the queen of kingdoms again.

5Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.

Note"The lady of kingdoms" means the mistress or ruling queen over other kingdoms, the empire that all the other nations answered to.

6I was angry with my own people. I treated my own possession as if it were common, and I handed them over to you. But you showed them no mercy. Even on old people you laid a crushing load.

6I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.

Note"I have polluted mine inheritance" means treated as ordinary and unprotected what had been set apart as his own. "Inheritance" is the standard term for Israel as the portion belonging to God, the way a piece of family land belonged to a household. A yoke was the wooden bar strapped across the necks of oxen so they could be driven; it was the ordinary image for being ruled, taxed and put to forced labor by a conqueror.

7You said, "I will be queen forever." You did not take these things seriously, and you never thought about how it would end.

7And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it.

8So listen to this, you who love luxury and live without a worry, who say to yourself, "I am the one, and there is no one but me. I will never sit as a widow, and I will never lose my children."

8Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:

Note"I am, and there is no one but me" is the kind of claim made elsewhere in Isaiah by God alone; here Babylon says it about herself. In the picture of the city as a woman, widowhood means losing her king and childlessness means losing her population.

9Both of these will come to you in a single moment, on one day: the loss of your children and the loss of your husband. They will come on you in full measure, in spite of all your sorcery and the great power of your spells.

9But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.

NoteBabylon was famous across the ancient world for professional divination, reading omens, exorcism, protective spells. These were not fringe practices but a state-supported profession with its own written manuals.

10You felt safe in your evil. You said, "No one sees me." Your wisdom and your knowledge led you off the right path, and you said to yourself, "I am the one, and there is no one but me."

10For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.

11So disaster will come on you, and you will not know where it comes from. Trouble will fall on you, and you will not be able to push it away. Ruin will come on you suddenly, before you know it.

11Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.

NoteThe Hebrew behind "put it off" is the word normally used for warding something off by ritual, buying it off, or charming it away with a spell. The line is that Babylon's usual method of dealing with an approaching disaster will not work on this one.

12Go ahead then. Take your stand with your spells and your many sorceries, the ones you have worked at since you were young. Maybe they will do you some good. Maybe you can frighten someone off.

12Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.

NoteThe last words are ambiguous in Hebrew: they can mean "perhaps you will succeed" or "perhaps you will frighten it off." The tone is a challenge, not advice.

13You are worn out by all the advice you have been given. Let them step forward and save you now, the astrologers, the stargazers, the ones who predict month by month what is coming on you.

13Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

NoteThese are three named branches of Babylonian sky-watching. The King James "monthly prognosticators" means specialists who issued a forecast at each new moon of what the coming month held. "Astrologers" translates a phrase about dividing up the heavens into sections for reading omens.

14Look, they are like dry straw. The fire burns them up. They cannot save even themselves from the power of the flame. This is no fire with coals to warm you, no fire to sit beside.

14Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.

NoteStubble is the short dry stalks left standing in a field after the harvest, burned off before replanting. It flares and is gone at once. The closing line turns the image around: this is not the useful fire of a hearth you can warm yourself at.

15That is what they turn out to be for you, the people you have worked and traded with since you were young. Each one stumbles off his own way. Not one of them can save you.

15Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee.

Note"Thy merchants" are the foreign traders and dealers who did business in Babylon; "his quarter" in the King James means his own direction, that is, each heads back to his own country and none of them stays to help.