Isaiah 47

Isaiah 47:1-5

In this chapter we have the full of Babylon foretold. 1. The greatness of the vain threatened; (and from the height of prosperity into the depth of adversity, vers. 1—2). 2. The sin that prevailed God is bring this vain upon them. (1.) Their cruelty is the people of God, vers. 6. (2.) Their pride and earnest security, vers. 7—9. (3.) Their confidence in themselves, and patience of God, vers. 10. (4.) Their dependence upon enchantments and fericies, which is far from defending them, would basen their vain, vers. 11—15.

1. 6. C O M E down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. 7. Take the millstones and 8 grind meal, uncover thy locks, 9 make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. 10. 7. Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: 11 I will take vengeance, and 12 I will not meet thee as a man. 13. As far 14 our redeemers, the LORD of hosts of his name, the holy One of Israel. 15. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called 16 the lady of kingdoms.

Babylon had long sat as a queen, and soon her captives prostrate at her feet, a virgin kingdom, whom no conqueror had yet falsehood; but now her doom is read: into the dust the must fall low; no more her monarchs grace the throne, seized by the Persian king; no more resting in luxury and delicacies, v. 1. her miserable unbalance are reduced to the lowest drudgery, to grind at the mill, or driven in herds as captives before their lordly matters, v. 2. stripped naked, without compassion or humanity; for the vengeance is from God, v. 3. and he, as Israel’s Redeemer, now returns the cruelty they had shown his people, v. 4. The mulls which once resounded in the streets of Babylon, is silenced: and in darkness, whither they retired, or in their prison-house, in vain they lamented the loss of their kingdom, which should be no more restored, v. 5. Nee, (1.) They who abude their power, and walk in pride, God delights to abide. (2.) It is well to be injured to hardship; those who are most delicately brought up, will feel every revet of station with deeper anguish. (3.) When God visits in vengeance, the sinner may expect judgment without mercy.

6. ¶ 1 I was wroth with my people, 2 I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou shalt didst shew them no mercy, 3 upon the ancient lusts thou shalt very heavily laid thy yoke. 7. ¶ And thou saidst, I shall be 4 lady for ever: 8 that thou didst not lay thee 5 sleags to thy heart, 9 neither didst remember the latter 6 end of it. 8. Therefore hear now this, thou shalt art 7 given to pleasures, that dwellestly carefully, that layeth in thine heart, 8 I am, and none else besides me, I shall not 9 sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children. 10. 9. But 10 these two things shall come to thee in a moment 11 in one day; the loss of children and widowhood; they 12.

Isaiah 47:6-15

All God’s dealings are according to the strictest equity; if Babylon suffers, her sins have given abundant provocation. We have here,

1. The black catalogue of her crimes.

(1.) Cruelty to God’s people. God was wroth with his people, and meant to visit their iniquities with the fœurys, and therefore gave them into the hands of the Chaldeans; but they unmercifully challised them with scorpions, paying no regard to age or famine; but on the answers, which hoary locks, or honours, should have pleaded for compulsion, making their sole hoary. Note, They who cruelly apprehend God’s people, however they may triumph for a moment, will find a day of awful reckoning at hand.

(2.) Pride and security, v. 7. Because her monarchy formed established, she promised herself that her throne should be cured with the days of time; and neither regarding her sins, nor warned by the threatenings denounced against her, for secure in her own sufficiency, and deposed her enemies. Note, They who are most self-confident and secure, are marred the precipice of ruin.

(3.) Love of ease and pleasure, v. 8. Given up to the indulgence of sensual appetite, and confident that every day should return fraught with mirth and jollity, and no sorrow interrage the jocared hours.

(4.) Deteriorate forceries, and magical arts, in which from their youth they were trained up, and placed thereto their chief dependence: and all these are sins, which are remarked as found in Babylon mystical, and the causes of her destruction, See. xviii. a—7, 23.

2. The doom of Babylon is read. She trufled in her wisdom, jollity, wealth, and wickedness; but deceived herself, as sinners usually do: her hoists can issue only in her confusion, v. 10. Vain is her confidence; in one day the evils from which she thought herself so secured, shall overtake her, her king and nobles be slain, her people captivate, v. 9. So fudden and terrible the destruction, she could render forerice not avert it, v. 11. Fruitless would be every attempt of her astrologers and diviners; weared with disappointment, despair should seize her, when all the counsels of her magicians failed, and ruin approached, v. 12, 13. Her wise men, so far from delivering their country, should be unable to save themselves, utterly consumed by the Divine judgment, as fuel reduced by the flames to dust, v. 14. Her merchants, either those astrologers who had enriched themselves by their pretensions to science, or rather those who traded to Babylon, shall flee to secure themselves, every one to his quarter, or passage, glad to desert the devoted city, and eager to save themselves from the impending danger in their own lands. See Rev. xviii. 15. Note, (1.) Sinners are strangely apt to promote themselves secrecy and impunity, and this hardens their hearts against the Divine admonitions. (2.) The dangers, of which the proud and secure were least apprehensive, often suddenly surprise them, and too late, to their astonishment, they discover the ruin they cannot escape. (3.) The general monarch sits on a tottering throne, when wickedness loofens the pillars of it. (4.) Wisdom or wealth are no defence against the judgments of God. (5.) They who are the indulgence of deceiving others, shall themselves feel the heaviest flushes of vengeance.

Vol. II.

Isaiah 47:11

V.

Shaft come upon thee in their perfection, for the multitude of thy forceries, and for the great abundance of thine inchanments. 10. ¶ For thou hast trufled in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None feeth me: thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee: and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else besides thee. 11. Therefore shaft evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it rifeeth: and miff chief shaft fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to pass it off: and defoliation shaft come upon thee fuddenly, which thou shalt not know. 12. Stand now with thine inchanments, and with the multitude of thy forceries, whence thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayeth prevail. 13. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the astrologers, the flare-gazers, & the monthly prognosticators stand up, and save thee from their things that shaft come upon thee. 14. Behold, they shall be as Rubble: the fire shall burn them: they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to fit before it. 15. Thus shaft they be unto thee: with whom thou hast laboured, roes thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every one to his quarter, none shaft save thee.