Isaiah 47:1-15
47 Come down and sit on the earth, maiden daughter of Babylon; sit chairless on the ground, daughter of Chaldea; for they shall no longer call you delicate and dainty.
2 Take a quern and grind meal; doff your veil, strip off long skirts, uncover legs, ford rivers.
3 * Your nudity shall be uncovered, yes, your ignominy shall be visible; I will have my revenge and not take my ease,
4 says the champion of our rights, whose name is Jehovah of Armies, Israel’s Holy One.
5 Sit silent and go into the dark, daughter of Chaldea; for they will no longer call you mistress of kingdoms.
6 I was incensed against my people, I let my estate be desecrated and gave them into your hands; you accorded them no kindness, you laid a very heavy yoke on an old man.
7 And you said “I shall be mistress forever”; you did not set your mind to these things, did not remember their sequel.
8 Now hear this, luxurious one, you that sit confident of your security, that say to yourself “There’s me and that’s all! I shall never sit in a widow’s seat nor experience the loss of my children”;
9 * you shall have these two things come at a stroke, on one day, the loss of your children and widowhood; to the utmost they will have come upon you for your wholesale witchcraft, for your multitudinous incantations.
10 * But you put confidence in your science; you said “nobody sees me”; your culture and science turned your head, and you said to yourself “There’s me and that’s all.”
11 * But there will come upon you a calamity that you do not know the spell for, and there will fall upon you a ruin that you cannot buy off, and an unexpected storm will come suddenly upon you.
12 Stand there with your incantations and your wholesale witchcrafts that you have toiled over from your girlhood; perhaps you can accomplish something, perhaps you will overawe somebody.
13 You are tired with your elaborate policy: let the astronomers stand there and save you, those who gaze at the stars and prognosticate the moons, from the things that are to come upon you.
14 * There they have turned to straw, fire has burned them; they will not deliver their own selves from the hands of flame; there is not a bed of coals to warm one’s self by, a campfire to sit before.
15 * Such you find those become for whom you have toiled, your spell-casters from your girlhood; they are wandering each to a different quarter, there is nobody to save you.
Footnotes
^ 47:3 Codd. and will not meet a human being. The champion of our rights is named Var. and will not meet (conj. listen to intercession Conj. be negligent), says the champion
^ 47:9 Or with all your wholesale witchcraft, your multitudinous
^ 47:10 Var. put confidence (or felt secure) in your wickedness
^ 47:11 (last part) Unc.
^ 47:14 Var. they did not
^ 47:15 Codd. your merchants from Susp.
