Sit in the Dust, Virgin Daughter of Babylon
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. 2 Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, lift up your skirt, uncover your legs, and wade through the rivers. 3 Your nakedness will be uncovered. Yes, your shame will be seen. I will take vengeance, and will spare no one.” 4 Our Redeemer, Yahweh of Armies is his name, is the Holy One of Israel. 5 “Sit in silence, and go into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans. For you shall no longer be called the mistress of kingdoms. 6 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. 7 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. 8 “Now therefore hear this, you who are given to pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me. I won’t sit as a widow, neither will I know the loss of children.’ 9 But these two things will come to you in a moment in one day: the loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in their full measure, in the multitude of your sorceries, and the great abundance of your enchantments. 10 For you have trusted in your wickedness. You have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge has perverted you. You have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me.’ 11 Therefore disaster will come on you. You won’t know when it dawns. Mischief will fall on you. You won’t be able to put it away. Desolation will come on you suddenly, which you don’t understand. 12 “Stand now with your enchantments and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, as if you might profit, as if you might prevail. 13 You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels. Now let the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from the things that will happen to you. 14 Behold, they are like stubble. The fire will burn them. They won’t deliver themselves from the power of the flame. It won’t be a coal to warm at or a fire to sit by. 15 The things that you labored in will be like this: those who have trafficked with you from your youth will each wander in his own way. There will be no one to save you.
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, daughter of the Chaldeans. For you will no longer be called tender and delicate.
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.
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.
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.
“Now therefore hear this, you who are given to pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me. I won’t sit as a widow, neither will I know the loss of children.’
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. They will come on you in their full measure, in the multitude of your sorceries, and the great abundance of your enchantments.
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.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge has perverted you. You have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me.’
You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels. Now let the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from the things that will happen to you.
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. They won’t deliver themselves from the power of the flame. It won’t be a coal to warm at or a fire to sit by.
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