Isaiah 47:1-15 NIV
The Fall of Babylon
Virgin Daughter Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne,
queen city of the Babylonians.a
No more will you be called
tender or delicate.
take off your veil.
Lift up your skirts, bare your legs,
and wade through the streams.
and your shame uncovered.
I will take vengeance;
I will spare no one.”
4 Our REDEEMERr—The LORD ALMIGHTY Is His Name—
Is The
HOLY ONE of Israel.
5“Sit in silence, go into darkness,
queen
city of the Babylonians;
no more
will you be called
queen
of kingdoms.
and Desecrated My Inheritance;
I Gave them into your hand,
and you Showed them no mercy.
Even on the aged
you laid a very heavy yoke.
7You said, ‘I am forever—
the
eternal queen!’
But you
did not consider these things
or
reflect on what might happen.
8“Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
lounging
in your security
and
saying to yourself,
‘I am,
and there is none besides me.
I will
never be a widow
or
suffer the loss of children.’
9Both of these will overtake you
in a
moment, on a single day:
loss of
children and widowhood.
They
will come upon you in full measure,
in
spite of your many sorceries
and all
your potent spells.
10You have trusted in your wickedness
and have
said, ‘No one sees me.’
Your
wisdom and knowledge mislead you
when
you say to yourself,
‘I am,
and there is none besides me.’
11Disaster will come upon you,
and you
will not know how to conjure it away.
A
calamity will fall upon you
that
you cannot ward off with a ransom;
a
catastrophe you cannot foresee
will
suddenly come upon you.
12“Keep on, then, with your magic spells
and
with your many sorceries,
which
you have labored at since childhood.
Perhaps
you will succeed,
perhaps
you will cause terror.
13All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!
Let
your astrologers come forward,
those
stargazers who make predictions month by month,
let
them save you from what is coming upon you.
14Surely they are like stubble;
the
fire will burn them up.
They cannot
even save themselves
from
the power of the flame.
These
are not coals for warmth;
this is
not a fire to sit by.
15That is all they are to you—
these
you have dealt with
and
labored with since childhood.
All of
them go on in their error;
there
is not one that can save you.
This chapter is a prophecy of the destruction of Babylon and
declares the causes of it. The mean, low, and miserable condition Babylon and
the Chaldeans should be brought into by The Lord, The REDEEMER of His people, Is Described, Isaiah
47:1, the causes of it are their cruelty to the
Jews, Isaiah
47:6, their pride and carnal security, Isaiah 47:7 their
sorceries and enchantments, and trust in their own wisdom, Isaiah 47:9,
wherefore their destruction should come suddenly upon them, and they should not
be able to put it off by any means, Isaiah 47:11,
their magic art, and astrology, which they boasted of, by them they could
neither foresee nor withstand their ruin, which would be of no avail to
them, Isaiah
47:12, nor their merchants either, Isaiah 47:15.
In the Book of Revelation, the destruction of Babylon, a city which seems
to be a symbol of every kind of evil, is foretold.
Revelation 14:8
A second
angel followed and said, “‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great,’ which made all
the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.”
Revelation 18:2
With a
mighty voice he shouted: “‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’ She has become
a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit, a haunt for every
unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.”
The connection with the
actual historical city of Babylon is usually held to be metaphorical. It may be
that "Babylon" is used here as a metaphor, dysphemism,
or 'code word' for the power of the Roman
Empire, which was oppressing the church much as
the Babylonian empire had
oppressed the Jewish people in Old Testament times; with the reason given
usually being that it was not considered safe or prudent to speak openly
against Rome.
Elsewhere in the Book of
Revelation, Babylon is the name of a whore who
rules over the kings of the earth and rides upon a seven-headed beast. In one
of the Bible's most famous cases of numerology,
the beast is commonly believed to have the identifying number 666,
which has often been linked with Nero.
Whom or what Babylon refers to in the Book of
Revelation has been the subject of much speculation over the centuries:
As noted above, the standard scholarly interpretation
is that Babylon symbolizes Rome and
the "Whore of Babylon" therefore either refers to the Roman emperor,
or personified the power of the Roman Empire under whom many early Christians and Jews were persecuted, tortured,
and martyred for their beliefs because they would not
submit to the Roman Emperor as a god. Many scholars believe that the
early Christians used "Babylon" as a euphemism for
pagan Rome, so that their small community wouldn't be found out and persecuted
even more.
Some Fundamentalist Protestant commentaries on the Book of Revelation treat the references to the city Babylon in Revelation as both the City of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church personified in the institution of the papacy. Some Protestant denominations today do not give credence to such arguments however.
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