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47. Fall of Babylon

¹ “Go down, sit in the dust,
   Virgin Daughter Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne,
   queen city of the Babylonians. Or Chaldeans; also in verse 5
No more will you be called
   tender or delicate.
² Take millstones and grind flour;
   take off your veil.
Lift up your skirts, bare your legs,
   and wade through the streams.
³ Your nakedness will be exposed
   and your shame uncovered.
I will take vengeance;
   I will spare no one.”

⁴ Our Redeemer—the LORD Almighty is his name—
is the Holy One of Israel.

    ⁵ “Sit in silence, go into darkness,
   queen city of the Babylonians;
no more will you be called
   queen of kingdoms.
⁶ I was angry with my people
   and desecrated my inheritance;
I gave them into your hand,
   and you showed them no mercy.
Even on the aged
   you laid a very heavy yoke.
⁷ You said, ‘I am forever—
   the eternal queen!’
But you did not consider these things
   or reflect on what might happen.

    ⁸ “Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
   lounging in your security
and saying to yourself,
   ‘I am, and there is none besides me.
I will never be a widow
   or suffer the loss of children.’
⁹ Both of these will overtake you
   in a moment, on a single day:
   loss of children and widowhood.
They will come upon you in full measure,
   in spite of your many sorceries
   and all your potent spells.
¹⁰ You have trusted in your wickedness
   and have said, ‘No one sees me.’
Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you
   when you say to yourself,
   ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’
¹¹ Disaster will come upon you,
   and you will not know how to conjure it away.
A calamity will fall upon you
   that you cannot ward off with a ransom;
a catastrophe you cannot foresee
   will suddenly come upon you.

    ¹² “Keep on, then, with your magic spells
   and with your many sorceries,
   which you have labored at since childhood.
Perhaps you will succeed,
   perhaps you will cause terror.
¹³ All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!
   Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
   let them save you from what is coming upon you.
¹⁴ Surely they are like stubble;
   the fire will burn them up.
They cannot even save themselves
   from the power of the flame.
These are not coals for warmth;
   this is not a fire to sit by.
¹⁵ That is all they are to you—
   these you have dealt with
   and labored with since childhood.
All of them go on in their error;
   there is not one that can save you.

1. Come down, and sit in the dust. Isaiah now explains more fully what he had briefly noticed concerning the counsel of God, and the execution of it. He openly describes the destruction of Babylon; because no hope whatever of the return of the people could be entertained, so long as the Babylonian monarchy flourished. Accordingly, he has connected these two things, namely, the overthrow of that monarchy, and the deliverance of the people which followed it; for the elevated rank of that city was like a deep grave in which the Jews were buried, and, when it had been opened, the Lord brought back his people to their former life.

The use of the imperative mood, “Come down,” is more forcible than if he had expressed the same thing in plain words and simple narrative; for he addresses her authoritatively, and as if he were speaking from the judgment-seat; because he proclaims the commands of God, and therefore, with the boldness which his authority entitles him to use, he publishes what shall happen, as we know that God granted this authority to the prophets. “Behold, I have this day set thee over nations and kingdoms, to root out and pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:10.) There is no power that is not added to the authority of the word. In a word, he intended to place the event immediately before the eye of the Jews; for that change could scarcely be imagined, if God did not thunder from heaven.

Virgin daughter of Babylon. It was a figure of speech frequently employed by Hebrew writers, to call any nation by the title of “Daughter.” He calls her “Virgin,” not because she was modest or chaste, but because she had been brought up softly and delicately like “virgins,” and had never been forced by enemies, as we formerly said when speaking of Sidon. ²²²²²² Commentary on Isaiah, vol. 2, p. 155. And at the present day the same thing might be said of Venice and some other towns, which have a great abundance of wealth and luxuries, and, in the estimation of men, are accounted very happy; for they have as good reason as the Babylonians had to dread such a revolution of affairs, even when they appear to be far removed from danger.

For it shall no longer be. That is, “Thou shalt no longer be caressed by men who thought that thou wast happy.”

2. Take millstones. The whole of this description tends to shew that there shall be a great change among the Babylonians, so that this city, which was formerly held in the highest honor, shall be sunk in the lowest disgrace, and subjected to outrages of every kind, and thus shall exhibit a striking display of the wrath of God. These are marks of the most degrading slavery, as the meanest slaves were formerly shut up in a mill. The condition of the captives who were reduced to it must therefore have been very miserable; for, in other cases, captives sometimes received from their conquerors mild and gentle treatment. But here he describes a very wretched condition, that believers may not doubt that they shall be permitted freely to depart, when the Babylonians, who had held them prisoners, shall themselves be imprisoned. Now, though we do not read that the nobles of the kingdom were subjected to such contemptuous treatment, it was enough for the fulfillment of this prophecy, that Cyrus, by assigning to them the operations of slaves, degraded them, and compelled them to abstain from honorable employments.

Unbind thy curled locks. On account of their excessive indulgence in magnificence of dress, he again alludes to the attire of young women, by mentioning “curled locks.” We know that girls are more eager than they ought to be about cuffing their hair, and other parts of dress. Here, on the contrary, the Prophet describes a totally different condition and attire; that is, that ignominy, and blackness, and filth shall cover from head to foot those who formerly dazzled all eyes by gaudy finery.

Uncover the limbs. “Virgins” hardly ever are accustomed to walk in public, and, at least, seldom travel on the public roads; but the Prophet says that the Babylonian virgins will be laid under the necessity of crossing the rivers, and with their limbs uncovered.