Isaías 47

Daughter Babylon in the dust

¹Get down and sit in the dirt, Virgin Daughter Babylon. \q Sit on the bare ground, Daughter of the Chaldeans; your throne is gone. \q Never again will anyone call you soft and pampered. ²Take the hand mill and grind the meal. \q Off with your veil! Strip away your long skirt, bare your legs, and wade the rivers. ³Your nakedness will be laid bare; your disgrace will be there for all to see. \q I will take vengeance, and I will hold back for no one.^a

⁴Our Redeemer, whose name is the LORD of Armies, \q the Holy One of Israel! ⁵Sit there speechless; go off into the dark, Daughter of the Chaldeans, \q for no one will hail you again as queen over the kingdoms. ⁶In my anger at my people, I let my own inheritance be defiled \q and handed them over to your power. \q Yet you showed them no compassion; \q you loaded your heavy yoke even on the old. ⁷You told yourself, “I will be queen forever, for all time.” \q You never took these things to heart or thought about where they would lead.^b

Spells and stargazers cannot save her

⁸So hear this now, you pleasure-loving woman, settled so securely, \q who thinks in her heart, “I am, and there is no other but me. \q I will never be left a widow; I will never know the grief of losing children.” ⁹Yet both will strike you in an instant, on a single day: \q the loss of your children and widowhood. \q They will fall on you in full force, \q for all your many sorceries and all the strength of your spells.^{c 10}You leaned on your wickedness and said, “No one is watching me.” \q Your wisdom and your learning have drawn you off course, \q and in your heart you said, “I am, and there is no other but me.” ¹¹Evil will come upon you, and you will not know the charm to drive it off; \q ruin will fall on you that you cannot pay off; \q destruction will overtake you all at once, something you never saw coming.^{d 12}Go on, then: hold your ground with your spells and your heaps of sorceries, \q which you have worked at from your earliest days. \q Maybe they will help you; maybe you will make your foes tremble. ¹³All the advice you gather only wears you out. \q Let them come forward now and save you from what is coming upon you, \q those who divide up the heavens and watch the stars, \q who give their forecasts at each new moon.^{e 14}Look! They have become like straw, and fire consumes them. \q They cannot rescue their own lives from the blaze. \q This is not a bed of coals to warm yourself by, not a hearth to sit beside. ¹⁵That is all they will be to you, the people you have toiled with, \q who have traded with you since your youth: \q they stray off, each going a different way, and no one is left to save you.