Old Testament · Prophets

Isaiah chapter 47

Come down and sit in the dust, of Babylon. Sit on the ground — no throne for you, daughter of the . No one will ever call you again.Take the and grind flour. Remove your , strip off your trailing skirts, bare your legs, wade through rivers.Your will be exposed, your shame will be uncovered. I will take , and no one will stand in my way.Our , Yahweh, , is his name, .Sit in silence and slip into the darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans. No one will ever call you again.I was angry with my people; I let be degraded. I handed them over to you, but you showed them no mercy. Even on the elderly you laid your with crushing weight.You said, ‘I will be forever’ — and never took any of this to heart, never considered how it would end.So now hear this, you , you who sit secure and tell yourself, ‘ — there is no one like me. I will never sit as a or know the loss of children’ —both of these will hit you in a single moment, in one day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come down on you in full force, despite your many and all your .You felt secure in your . You said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your so-called and knowledge led you astray, and you told yourself, ‘I am the only one — there is no one like me.’But disaster will fall on you, and you won’t know how to . Catastrophe will crash down on you, and you won’t be able to . Ruin will rush at you suddenly — before you even see it coming.Go ahead — keep at it with your spells and your many sorceries that you’ve worked at . Maybe you can still pull it off. Maybe you can scare something away.You’ve exhausted yourself with all your . Let them stand up now and save you — those who , who , who predict month by month what is about to happen to you.Look — they are like . Fire burns them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. This is no , no hearth to sit beside.That’s what they are to you — those you’ve since your youth. Each one in his own direction. No one can save you.