Isaiah 47

1. Come down, and sit in the dust. Babylon is represented here as a queen, reduced from the luxury and elegance of a palace to servitude and shame.

Sit on the ground : [there is] no throne. More literally, as R.V., “Sit on the ground without a throne.”

2. Take the millstones. See note on Exod. xi. 5. Uncover thy locks, etc. Rather, “Raise thy veil; lift up the skirt.” The exposure endured by the lowest class of slaves in doing their work.

3. I will not meet [thee as] a man. “I will make peace with no man” (“will accept no man,” R.V.), Luther’s version, similarly Cheyne, has “no one can resist Me.” Delitzsch translates: “I will take vengeance and not spare men.”

4 [As for] our Redeemer, etc. A joyful exclamation of the Church, recognising in the Lord of hosts all-conquering might, and a will to carry on the work of redemption.

6. I was wroth with My people. Although employed to chastise Israel’s sins, Babylon is to be dealt with according to her own purposes of cruel ambition: see notes on x. 7, and 1 Kings xii. 15.

8 that dwellest carelessly. The Babylonians trusted in their defences and provisions, and mocked Cyrus when he besieged their city.

I shall not sit as a widow. “A widow” in the loss of all alliances, “childless” in the loss of population.

9 in a moment in one day. Literally fulfilled; on the third of Marchesvan (Nov.), 539 B.C. The fall was sudden and complete.

thy sorceries . . . thine enchantments. The value which the Chaldeans set upon soothsaying appears from Dan. i. 20; ii. 2, 10; iv. 7; v. 11, etc.

10. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge. The Chaldeans were celebrated for their astronomical science and philosophy.

11. Thou shalt not know from whence it riseth. Lit., “Thou shalt not know the dawning thereof.” Moffatt translates, “You know not how to evade.”

13. Let now the astrologers. The astrologers professed to make their calculations of the future by “dividing the heavens” into houses, watching the stars in their conjunctions and oppositions, and “studying the new moons” as to their times, etc.

14. There shall not be a coal to warm at. This may mean, “It shall not be a coal to warm one’s self at,” etc., but a fire intolerably hot and destructive: see Heb. xii. 29.

15. Thus shall they be unto thee, etc. Rather, “Thus shall the things be unto thee wherein thou hast laboured; they that have trafficked with thee from thy youth shall wander,” etc., R.V. All who have carried on commercial intercourse with the great trading city are scattered, regardless of its humiliation.