Biblion Bible Commentary
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Sit in the Dust, Virgin Daughter of Babylon
Isaiah 47:1-15
1 “Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, daughter of the Chaldeans. For you will no longer be called tender and delicate. · WEB
An empire is told to take off its veil and grind flour, and its one recorded crime is how it treated the old.
Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne Isaiah 47:1.
The city is addressed as a woman of rank being removed from her seat. You will no longer be called tender and delicate — the two words describe a life that has never had to do anything.
Take the millstones and grind flour Isaiah 47:2.
The work of the lowest slave in a household, given to the mistress of kingdoms. Grinding was done squatting, all day, and it was the job nobody wanted.
I was angry with my people. I profaned my inheritance and gave them into your hand. You showed them no mercy. You laid a very heavy yoke on the aged Isaiah 47:6.
The indictment, and it turns on one distinction. Babylon was given the commission — the first half of the verse says so plainly, as chapter ten said of Assyria. What is charged is the manner. There was no mercy in the execution, and the specific instance recorded is the treatment of old people.
Of everything an empire did in a deportation, the crime this chapter names is the yoke on the aged. Nothing else is specified.
You said, "I will be a princess forever," so that you didn't lay these things to your heart, nor did you remember the results Isaiah 47:7.
The assumption of permanence is what made the cruelty possible. A power that expects to be called to account behaves differently, and this one had stopped expecting it.
You who say in your heart, "I am, and there is no one else besides me" Isaiah 47:8.
The sentence is God's own, used throughout these chapters — I am, and there is no one else Isaiah 45:5 — and it is quoted here from the mouth of a city. It is the exact form of the claim the book has been making, spoken by a creature.
But these two things will come to you in a moment in one day: the loss of children and widowhood Isaiah 47:9.
The two conditions she said she would never know, both at once.
For you have trusted in your wickedness. You have said, "No one sees me" Isaiah 47:10.
Now let the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you Isaiah 47:13.
Babylon's astronomy was the most advanced in the world and its records were genuinely accurate. The chapter does not dispute the observations; it asks the observers to do something.
Behold, they are like stubble. The fire will burn them... It won't be a coal to warm at or a fire to sit by Isaiah 47:14.
The last clause is almost an aside and it is the chapter's driest line. Not even a useful fire.
settled What this mark means