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The Humiliation of Babylon

Come down and sit in the dust,

virgin daughter Babylon!

Sit on the ground without a throne,

daughter Chaldea!

For you shall no more be called

tender and delicate.

Take the millstones and grind meal,

remove your veil,

strip off your robe, uncover your legs,

pass through the rivers.

Your nakedness shall be uncovered,

and your shame shall be seen.

I will take vengeance,

and I will spare no one.

Our Redeemer—the L ord of hosts is his name—

is the Holy One of Israel.

Sit in silence, and go into darkness,

daughter Chaldea!

For you shall no more be called

the mistress of kingdoms.

I was angry with my people,

I profaned my heritage;

I gave them into your hand,

you showed them no mercy;

on the aged you made your yoke

exceedingly heavy.

You said, “I shall be mistress forever,”

so that you did not lay these things to heart

or remember their end.

Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures,

who sit securely,

who say in your heart,

“I am, and there is no one besides me;

I shall not sit as a widow

or know the loss of children”—

both these things shall come upon you

in a moment, in one day:

the loss of children and widowhood

shall come upon you in full measure,

in spite of your many sorceries

and the great power of your enchantments.

You felt secure in your wickedness;

you said, “No one sees me.”

Your wisdom and your knowledge

led you astray,

and you said in your heart,

“I am, and there is no one besides me.”

But evil shall come upon you,

which you cannot charm away;

disaster shall fall upon you,

which you will not be able to ward off;

and ruin shall come on you suddenly,

of which you know nothing.

Stand fast in your enchantments

and your many sorceries,

with which you have labored from your youth;

perhaps you may be able to succeed,

perhaps you may inspire terror.

You are wearied with your many consultations;

let those who study the heavens

stand up and save you,

those who gaze at the stars,

and at each new moon predict

what shall befall you.

See, they are like stubble,

the fire consumes them;

they cannot deliver themselves

from the power of the flame.

No coal for warming oneself is this,

no fire to sit before!

Such to you are those with whom you have labored,

who have trafficked with you from your youth;

they all wander about in their own paths;

there is no one to save you.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

9. But those two things shall suddenly come to thee. Because Babylon supposed that she was beyond the reach of all danger, the Prophet threatens against her very sore distress. When she said that she would neither be “a widow” nor “childless,” he declares on the other hand, that both calamities shall come upon her, so that her miserable destitution shall expose her to the utmost contempt.

In their perfection. That is, “completely,” so that in all points, without any exception, she shall be childless. There is also an implied contrast between moderate punishment, some alleviation of which may be expected, and the dreadful vengeance of God, which has no other end than ruin; for, the greater the confidence with which wicked men are elated, the more severely are they punished.

For the multitude of thy divinations. Some render this term diviners; but I think that it denotes the act or the vice rather than the persons. Some explain ב (beth) to mean “on account of,” and understand it to express a cause; and in this sense it frequently occurs in Scripture. Yet it might be suitably interpreted, that the Babylonians shall derive no aid or relief from the deceitful skill in divinations of which they boasted so much; and so it might be translated notwithstanding; ²²⁷²²⁷ “Ewald agrees with the English Version and the Vulgate in explaining it to mean propter, ‘on account of,’ and supposing it to be a new specific charge against the Babylonians, by assigning a new cause for their destruction, namely, their cultivation of the occult arts. Gesenius and the other recent writers follow Calvin and Vitringa in making it mean notwithstanding, as in Isaiah 5:25, and Numbers 14:11. There is then no new charge or reason assigned, but a simple declaration of the insufficiency of superstitious arts to save them. But a better course than either is to give the particle in its proper sense of in or in the, midst of, which suggests both the other ideas, but expresses more, namely, that they should perish in the very act of using these unlawful and unprofitable means of preservation.” — Alexander. as if he had said, “The abundance of divinations or auguries shall not prevent these things from happening to Babylon.” ²²⁸²²⁸ “Nonobstant la multitude des derins et augures.” “Notwithstanding the multitude of divinations and auguries.” He ridicules the confidence which they placed in their useless auguries, by which they thought that they foresaw future events; but, as we shall shortly afterwards dwell more largely on this point, I readily admit that it is here reckoned to be one of the causes of the vengeance inflicted on them, that, in consequence of trusting to such delusions, they dreaded nothing. ²²⁹²²⁹ “Ils ont defie tous dangers.” “They defied all dangers.”

²²⁷ “Ewald agrees with the English Version and the Vulgate in explaining it to mean propter, ‘on account of,’ and supposing it to be a new specific charge against the Babylonians, by assigning a new cause for their destruction, namely, their cultivation of the occult arts. Gesenius and the other recent writers follow Calvin and Vitringa in making it mean notwithstanding, as in Isaiah 5:25, and Numbers 14:11. There is then no new charge or reason assigned, but a simple declaration of the insufficiency of superstitious arts to save them. But a better course than either is to give the particle in its proper sense of in or in the, midst of, which suggests both the other ideas, but expresses more, namely, that they should perish in the very act of using these unlawful and unprofitable means of preservation.” — Alexander.

²²⁸ “Nonobstant la multitude des derins et augures.” “Notwithstanding the multitude of divinations and auguries.”

²²⁹ “Ils ont defie tous dangers.” “They defied all dangers.”