Isaiah 47

⁸O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us.

³³For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”

¹¹Go up to Gilead for balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt! In vain you try many remedies, but for you there is no healing.

⁴²They grasp the bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride upon horses, lined up like men in formation against you, O Daughter of Babylon.

⁷“Get up, O Zion! Escape, you who dwell with the Daughter of Babylon!”

²⁶And the gates of Zion will lament and mourn; destitute, she will sit on the ground.

²¹Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze shackles and forced to grind grain in the prison.

⁴so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, naked and barefoot, with bared buttocks—to Egypt’s shame.

⁵and every firstborn son in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the servant girl behind the hand mill, as well as the firstborn of all the cattle.

⁴¹Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.

⁶⁵and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?” “It is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.

³Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her like the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and turn her into a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst.

⁵“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of Hosts. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms.

²⁰“You are My war club, My weapon for battle. With you I shatter nations; with you I bring kingdoms to ruin.

²¹With you I shatter the horse and rider; with you I shatter the chariot and driver.

²⁷Kill all her young bulls; let them go down to the slaughter. Woe to them, for their day has come—the time of their punishment.

²⁸Listen to the fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon, declaring in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, the vengeance for His temple.

¹⁹The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. And God remembered Babylon the great and gave her the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath.

³⁴“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.

³⁵May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,” says the dweller of Zion. “May my blood be on the dwellers of Chaldea,” says Jerusalem.

³⁵Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is coming quickly.”

²⁶I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

³³This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “The sons of Israel are oppressed, and the sons of Judah as well. All their captors hold them fast, refusing to release them.

³⁴Their Redeemer is strong; the Lord of Hosts is His name. He will fervently plead their case so that He may bring rest to the earth, but turmoil to those who live in Babylon.

¹⁴Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “For your sake, I will send to Babylon and bring them all as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships in which they rejoice.

⁶Thus says the Lord, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the Lord of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.

¹⁴Do not fear, O Jacob, you worm, O few men of Israel. I will help you,” declares the Lord. “Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

³For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place.

¹⁶saying: “Woe, woe to the great city, clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls!

¹⁷For in a single hour such fabulous wealth has been destroyed!” Every shipmaster, passenger, and sailor, and all who make their living from the sea, will stand at a distance

²⁰But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.

⁷You said, ‘I will be queen forever.’ You did not take these things to heart or consider their outcome.

²³“I will make her a place for owls and for swamplands; I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction,” declares the Lord of Hosts.

¹³Be silent before the Lord, all people, for He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling.”

¹⁰For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light. The rising sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.

¹⁵but I am fiercely angry with the nations that are at ease. For I was a little angry, but they have added to the calamity.’

⁹But a prophet of the Lord named Oded was there, and he went out to meet the army that returned to Samaria. “Look,” he said to them, “because of His wrath against Judah, the Lord, the God of your fathers, has delivered them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.

⁵⁰a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young.

¹⁰Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and cut off forever.

¹³For judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

²⁶For they persecute the one You struck and recount the pain of those You wounded.

²⁹If only they were wise, they would understand it; they would comprehend their fate.

⁵“Sit in silence and go into darkness, O Daughter of the Chaldeans. For you will no longer be called the queen of kingdoms.

³¹The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority. My people love it so, but what will you do in the end?

⁸Remember this and be brave; take it to heart, you transgressors!

⁹Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me.

³The end is now upon you, and I will unleash My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations.

⁴I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’

¹²“Son of man, take up a lament for the king of Tyre and tell him that this is what the Lord God says: ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

¹³You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.

⁹Stand up, you complacent women; listen to me. Give ear to my word, you overconfident daughters.

¹⁵This carefree city that dwells securely, that thinks to herself: “I am it, and there is none besides me,” what a ruin she has become, a resting place for beasts. Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.

¹⁰You were secure in your wickedness; you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge led you astray; you told yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’

³All the nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her immorality. The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from the extravagance of her luxury.”

⁴Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues.

¹¹“Because you rejoice, because you sing in triumph—you who plunder My inheritance—because you frolic like a heifer treading grain and neigh like stallions,

⁶so that all may know, from where the sun rises to where it sets, that there is none but Me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.

³While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

¹⁹How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!

⁴because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.

¹²So take your stand with your spells and with your many sorceries, with which you have wearied yourself from your youth. Perhaps you will succeed; perhaps you will inspire terror!

¹³You are wearied by your many counselors; let them come forward now and save you—your astrologers who observe the stars, who monthly predict your fate.

⁸Therefore her plagues will come in one day—death and grief and famine—and she will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”

⁹Then the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail at the sight of the smoke rising from the fire that consumes her.

¹²As He approached the town gate, He saw a dead man being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.

¹³When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said, “Do not weep.”

²¹Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

¹⁵Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the Lord. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”

⁷“Look at the man who did not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his wealth and strengthened himself by destruction.”

¹²“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

⁴No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.

³While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

⁹Then the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail at the sight of the smoke rising from the fire that consumes her.

¹⁰In fear of her torment, they will stand at a distance and cry out: “Woe, woe to the great city, the mighty city of Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.”

¹¹And our enemies said, “Before they know or see a thing, we will come into their midst, kill them, and put an end to the work.”

³Remember, then, what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know the hour when I will come upon you.

³⁹While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they may revel; then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up, declares the Lord.

⁴⁰I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.

²²Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you:

⁸But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith.

⁹Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked directly at Elymas

⁹These two things will overtake you in a moment, in a single day: loss of children, and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the potency of your spells.

¹⁰You were secure in your wickedness; you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge led you astray; you told yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’

⁴because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.

²⁸But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up in your time of trouble and save you if they can; for your gods are as numerous as your cities, O Judah.

⁴The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls. She held in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.

⁵And on her forehead a mysterious name was written: BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

⁷But the magicians did the same thing by their magic arts, and they also brought frogs up onto the land of Egypt.

²⁵who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who confounds the wise and turns their knowledge into nonsense,

²So the king gave orders to summon the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers to explain his dreams. When they came and stood before the king,

³he said to them, “I have had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to understand it.”

¹⁰You are wearied by your many journeys, but you did not say, “There is no hope!” You found renewal of your strength; therefore you did not grow weak.

¹²It has frustrated every effort; its thick rust has not been removed, even by the fire.

⁵⁸This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Babylon’s thick walls will be leveled, and her high gates consumed by fire. So the labor of the people will be for nothing; the nations will exhaust themselves to fuel the flames.”

³⁰That very night Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans was slain,

¹“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”

¹⁰For they will be entangled as with thorns and consumed like the drink of a drunkard—like stubble that is fully dry.

⁷And I will set My face against them. Though they may have escaped the fire, yet another fire will consume them. And when I set My face against them, you will know that I am the Lord.

¹⁷And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles.

²Who has aroused one from the east and called him to his feet in righteousness? He hands nations over to him and subdues kings before him. He turns them to dust with his sword, to windblown chaff with his bow.

²⁸Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

¹¹And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because there is no one left to buy their cargo—

¹²cargo of gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls; of fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet; of all kinds of citron wood and every article of ivory, precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble;

¹²Tarshish was your merchant because of your great wealth of goods; they exchanged silver, iron, tin, and lead for your wares.

¹³Javan, Tubal, and Meshech were your merchants. They exchanged slaves and bronze utensils for your merchandise.

⁶Flee from Babylon! Escape with your lives! Do not be destroyed in her punishment. For this is the time of the Lord’s vengeance; He will pay her what she deserves.

⁷Babylon was a gold cup in the hand of the Lord, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad.

¹¹Like ravenous dogs, they are never satisfied. They are shepherds with no discernment; they all turn to their own way, each one seeking his own gain: