Isaiah 47

¹ Down with you! Sit in the dust, virgin, daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground, dethroned, daughter of the Chaldaeans. Never again will you be called tender and delicate.

² Take the millstones, grind the meal. Remove your veil, tie up your skirt, uncover your legs. Wade through rivers.

³ Let your nakedness be seen, and your shame exposed. I am going to take vengeance and no one can stop me.

⁴ Our redeemer, Yahweh Sabaoth his name, the Holy One of Israel, says:

⁵ Sit in silence and creep into shadows, daughter of the Chaldaeans, for you will no longer be called sovereign lady of the kingdoms.

⁶ I was angry with my people, I had profaned my heritage. I had surrendered it into your hands, but you showed them no mercy. On the aged you laid your crushing yoke.

⁷ You said, ‘For ever I shall be sovereign lady’. You never took these things to heart or pondered on their outcome.

⁸ So listen now, voluptuous woman, lolling at ease and saying to yourself, ‘I, and none besides me. I shall never be widowed, never know loss of children.’

⁹ Yet both these things shall happen to you both suddenly and on the same day. Loss of children, widowhood, at once will come to you; in spite of all your witchcraft and the power of all your spells.

¹⁰ You were bold in your wickedness and said, ‘There is no one to see me’. That wisdom and knowledge of yours led you astray. You said to yourself, ‘I, and none besides me’.

¹¹ A calamity shall fall on you which you will not be able to charm away, a disaster shall overtake you which you will not be able to avert, unforeseen ruin will suddenly descend on you.

¹² Keep to your spells then, and all your sorceries, for which you have worn yourself out since your youth. Do you think they will help you? Do you think they will make anyone nervous?

¹³ You have spent weary hours with your many advisers. Let them come forward now and save you, these who analyse the heavens, who study the stars and announce month by month what will happen to you next.

¹⁴ Oh, they will be like wisps of straw and the fire will burn them. They will not save their lives from the power of the flame. No embers these, for baking, no fireside to sit by.

¹⁵ This is what your wizards will be for you, those men for whom you have worn yourself out since your youth. They will all go off, each his own way, powerless to save you.