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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.

15. So shal they be to thee. After having threatened destruction to those astronomers, he again retums to the Babylonians, and threatens that they must not look for assistance from that quarter from which they expected it, and that they ought not to rely on those vain counsels, with which they had long and eagerly vexed themselves in vain.

He calls them dealers, or, as we commonly say, traffickers; a metaphor taken from merchants, who are skilled in innumerable arts of deceiving, and in impostures of every kind; for the princes do not consult in a manner suitable to their rank, but traffic in disgraceful transactions. ²³²²³² “It becomes a question whether these are called traders in the literal and ordinary sense, or at least in that of national allies and negotiators; or whether the epithet is given in contempt to the astrologers and wise men of the foregoing context, as trafficking or dealing in imposture. J. D. Michaelis supposes them to be described as travelling dealers, that is, pedlars and hawkers, who removed from place to place, lest their frauds should be discovered. He even compares them with the gipsy fortune-tellers of our own day, but admits that the astrologers of Babylonia held a very different position in society.” — Alexander. Though we may extend this to all the allies by whom the Babylonians were aided, yet the Prophet has his eye chiefly on the diviners. When he adds, from thy youth, he aggravates the guilt of Babylon, in having been infected with this foolish belief from an ancient date, and in having held this error as if it had been born with her.

Every one to his own quarter. ²³³²³³ “That is, wherever each person can depart, they disperse and wander, so that every person pursues his own road, for rescuing himself from danger, by fleeing to the farthest boundaries of the kingdom of Babylon. — Rosenmuller. It is supposed that the Prophet here speaks of the flight of the astrologers, that every one shall provide for his own safety; and I fully agree with this, but think that, there is also an allusion to the “quarters” of the heavens, which astrologers divide and measure, so as to deduce their prognostications from them. He therefore ridicules their vain boasting. “They shall withdraw into their quarters, but they shall go astray, and there shall be no means of protection. If any one choose to apply it to the revolt of those whose assistance Babylon thought that at any time she could easily obtain, I have no objection.