Isaiah 47:1-15
1 "Come down and sit in the dust,
O virgin daughter of Babylon;
Sit on the ground without a throne,
O daughter of the Chaldeans!
For you shall no more be called
Tender and delicate.
2 Take the millstones and grind meal.
Remove your veil,
Take off the skirt,
Uncover the thigh,
Pass through the rivers.
3 Your nakedness shall be uncovered,
Yes, your shame will be seen;
I will take vengeance,
And I will not arbitrate with a man."
4 As for our Redeemer, the LORD of hosts is His name,
The Holy One of Israel.
5 "Sit in silence, and go into darkness,
O daughter of the Chaldeans;
For you shall no longer be called
The Lady of Kingdoms.
6 I was angry with My people;
I have profaned My inheritance,
And given them into your hand.
You showed them no mercy;
On the elderly you laid your yoke very heavily.
7 And you said, 'I shall be a lady forever,'
So that you did not take these things to heart,
Nor remember the latter end of them.
8 "Therefore hear this now, you who are given to pleasures,
Who dwell securely,
Who say in your heart, 'I am, and there is no one else besides me;
I shall not sit as a widow,
Nor shall I know the loss of children';
9 But these two things shall come to you
In a moment, in one day:
The loss of children, and widowhood.
They shall come upon you in their fullness
Because of the multitude of your sorceries,
For the great abundance of your enchantments.
10 "For you have trusted in your wickedness;
You have said, 'No one sees me';
Your wisdom and your knowledge have warped you;
And you have said in your heart,
'I am, and there is no one else besides me.'
11 Therefore evil shall come upon you;
You shall not know from where it arises.
And trouble shall fall upon you;
You will not be able to put it off.
And desolation shall come upon you suddenly,
Which you shall not know.
12 "Stand now with your enchantments
And the multitude of your sorceries,
In which you have labored from your youth—
Perhaps you will be able to profit,
Perhaps you will prevail.
13 You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels;
Let now the astrologers, the stargazers,
And the monthly prognosticators
Stand up and save you
From what shall come upon you.
14 Behold, they shall be as stubble,
The fire shall burn them;
They shall not deliver themselves
From the power of the flame;
It shall not be a coal to be warmed by,
Nor a fire to sit before!
15 Thus shall they be to you
With whom you have labored,
Your merchants from your youth;
They shall wander each one to his quarter.
No one shall save you.
The humiliation of Babylon by the LORD for oppressing His people is revealed here through Isaiah. This is a picture and type of the enemy of all God’s people, of the chosen nation of Israel and the chosen out of all nations in Jesus Christ the Lord of all. The enemy’s arrogant pride will be stripped down and paraded around as the Babylonians portrayed as a naked woman walking in shame and working with her hands instead of being pampered in Royal palaces. The enemies will be revealed on judgment day for who they really are before God and man and the LORD will be seen as the holy Redeemer of His people, just as He did here before Babylon in the sight of Israel as a testimony to the onlooking nations. God’s people had angered Him in their continuing rejection and disbelief and He had handed them over to the enemy to refine them as gold (1 Timothy 1:20, Zechariah 13:9, 1 Peter 1:6-7). This is a foretaste for the rest of God’s people to come from the other nations as well (Hosea 2:23, Romans 9:24-26, 1 Peter 2:10). But when God handed them over to refine them through the discipline of their bondage, the Babylonians treated them as slaves without mercy and were then called to account by the LORD as He set the people free. Even now God uses the unbelievers to refine His people when they stray like Hymenaeus and Alexander, but holds the enemy and all who join with him accountable for eternal judgment still. Like those enemies of Israel here who imagined themselves untouchable and said in their hearts, 'I am, and there is no one else besides me,’ they will find everything taken away. Their wisdom apart from God warped them into believing that nobody could see what they were doing, a continuing delusion which ignores the omnipotence and omniscience of the Holy One who is the God-who-sees everything (Genesis 16:13) to include the hearts of men and women. The result is troubling desolation of evil returned on their own heads as they seek other gods and occult practices such as mediums, sorceries, astrologers, and fortune tellers for answers in place of God’s word. Such are powerless and futile before God and cannot save, being consumed by fire in the end. This is a picture of the lost who reject the Lord Jesus Christ and oppose His people, who end up in the lake of fire fore for choosing to remain in sinful disobedience and defiance of God instead of repenting and trusting what God has said and done in His Son. This is the bad news which makes the good news understandable. The wages of sin is death, but the free and unmerited gift of God in Christ is life forever with Him (Romans 6:23). Why be God’s enemy and face eternal humiliation when all is revealed before the throne when the choice is revealed and can be taken to heart with such promises of forgiveness and reconciliation with God?
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