Isaiah 47King James Version
A taunt song on Babylon. Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon. Thy nakedness shall be uncovered. Thou saidst, I shall be a lady forever. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee. The proud city will fall.
A taunt against Babylon personified as a pampered queen forced to sit in the dust and grind grain as a slave. Her sorceries and enchantments have failed. She said she would never be widowed or bereaved; both will come in a single day. Her wise men and astrologers cannot save her from the fire coming like consuming stubble.
Babylon's confidence in her own power and her sorceries is the exact pride that guarantees her fall. Luxury and occult knowledge are not protection.
verse: "For 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", she has claimed the divine self-declaration for herself.
A court of luxury reduced to a millstone. The image requires physical degradation: the queen who never touched common work now grinds her own grain, wades through rivers, exposes herself. The astrologers who advised from the palace rooftops are called to save her; their charts have nothing to offer the fire.
Babylon personified as the queen of kingdoms, daughter of Chaldeans. Her sorcerers, astrologers, and star-gazers who will be burned as stubble. No named human figures.
The queen-to-slave reversal runs in direct parallel with God's covenant language about Zion: the one being humiliated is Babylon precisely because she humiliated Israel. The self-declaration I am, and none else is the exact language God uses in chapters 44-46 for himself, and Babylon's appropriation of it is her blasphemy. Revelation 18 draws heavily on this chapter.
For when you feel that powerful systems, economic, political, cultural, seem invincible and eternal. The taunt song over Babylon is addressed to a power that considered its permanence self-evident.
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.
2Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.
3Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.
4As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.
5Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.