Open an explanation beneath verses with notes. Your notes and highlights stay on this device.
“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.
Verse 1. Virgin; delicate. Menochius.—Cyrus overthrew this empire, ( Calmet.) which now felt its share of misery. Worthington.
Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, lift up your skirt, uncover your legs, and wade through the rivers.
Verse 2. Shame. Hebrew tsammathec, Song of Songs 4:1, 4. Prot. “thy locks, make bare the legs, uncover the thigh, pass,” and so forth Bible.—Thou shalt be reduced to a state of the most abject slavery. Exodus 11:5. Sup. 3:17 and 20:4. The Barbarians sold their slaves naked.
Your nakedness will be uncovered. Yes, your shame will be seen. I will take vengeance, and will spare no one.”
Our Redeemer, the LORD of Armies is his name, is the Holy One of Israel.
“Sit in silence, and go into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans. For you shall no longer be called the mistress of kingdoms.
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.
Verse 6. Polluted; deemed or declared unclean. But thou hast sought to gratify thy vindictive temper, in punishing my people. Calmet.—The sins of both called down vengeance. Worthington.
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.
Verse 7. Lady. Pride goes before ruin. Proverbs 16:18.
“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.’
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.
Verse 9. Two. The empire and the people shall be removed at once.—Enchanters; princes or magicians, who gave them evil counsel. verse 12.
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.’
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.
Verse 11. Know. All this shews the vanity of magic, which cannot announce future events to do any good. Calmet.
“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.
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.
Verse 13. Months, to tell which would prove lucky. Esther 3:7.
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.
Verse 14. Thereat, to warm themselves, ( Bible.) or to adore. Calmet.—In Cappadocia are to be seen “Pyratheia, … in which the magi keep a perpetual fire, and sing hymns about the space of an hour.” Strabo xv.—These were a sort of open temples. Calmet.
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.
Verse 15. Merchants. The city was well situated for trade. Calmet. 13:20. Diod. ii.