Open English Translation ISA Chapter 47

47 Come down and sit in the dust you virgin daughter of Babylon.

Sit on the ground without a throne you daughter of the Chaldeans,[ref]

because people won’t call you tender and delicate any more.

2 Turn those millstones and grind flour.

Remove your veil and strip off your skirt.

Uncover your legs to wade through rivers.

3 Your nakedness will be exposed.

≈ Yes, your shame will be visible.

I’ll take vengeance and won’t spare anyone.

4 Commander-in-chief Yahweh is the name of the one who bought our freedom—

Yisrael’s holy one.

5 Sit in silence and go in darkness you daughter of the Chaldeans,

because you’ll no longer be called ‘the queen of kingdoms’.

6 I was angry with my people—

I defiled my inheritance and handed them over to you.

You showed them no compassion—

even the old had a heavy burden placed on them.

7 You said that you’d be queen forever,

but you didn’t give it enough thought—

you didn’t consider its outcome.

8 Now listen to this you over-indulged woman who lives in security,

saying in her heart, ‘No one else is important except me.[ref]

I’ll never be a widow or lose my children.’

9 But both of these things will suddenly happen to you:

Bereavement and childless will hit in one day.

They’ll come on you with completeness despite your plentiful sorcercies

and the power of your multiple spells.

10 You trusted in your wickedness and thought no one would notice you.

Your wisdom and knowledge has led you astray

and you told yourself that no one else was important except you.

11 Calamity will hit you and you won’t be able to charm it away.

≈ Disaster will fall on you and you won’t be able to avoid it—

≈ disaster like you’ve never known before will come on you suddenly.

12 Keep trusting your spells and your plentiful sorcercies

that you’ve worked hard at since your youth.

Perhaps you’ll be successful—maybe scaring disaster away.

13 You’ve become tired of listening to so much advice.

Please let them stand up and save you—

those ones who chart the skies and divine from moons

to discover what’s going to happen to you.

14 Look, they’ve become like straw that get burnt in a fire.

They can’t rescue themselves from the flames.

There’ll be no coals to warm them—no fire to sit by.

15 That’s what those you worked with have become—those traders from your youth.

Everyone has wandered in their own direction—there’s no rescuer.