What is the meaning of Isaiah 47:14? Surely they are like stubble God pictures Babylon’s astrologers and sorcerers as leftover straw on a harvested field—weightless, rootless, and good only for kindling. • Psalm 83:13 shows the same image: “Make them like tumbleweed… like chaff before the wind.” • Nahum 1:10 echoes, “They will be consumed like dry stubble.” • John the Baptist applies it universally in Matthew 3:12, where the chaff meets “unquenchable fire.” The point is simple: every human scheme that ignores the LORD is as temporary and combustible as stubble. The fire will burn them up The “fire” is God’s judgment, and it is certain, complete, and personal. • Isaiah 10:17 calls the Holy One “a fire” that “will burn and consume.” • Malachi 4:1 warns that a day is coming “burning like a furnace.” • Revelation 18:8 foretells Babylon’s end: “She will be consumed by fire.” What Babylon’s magicians called down for protection will instead arrive as the very blaze that ends them. They cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame No charm, prediction, or political alliance can shield a soul from the Lord’s verdict. • Isaiah 42:17 says idol-trusting people “will be turned back in utter shame.” • Psalm 49:7-8 reminds us, “No man can redeem his life, or give to God a ransom for him.” • Jeremiah 50:32 promises the proud will “stumble and fall with no one to lift him up,” as God Himself kindles the fire. Human self-rescue ends where divine holiness begins. There will be no coals to warm them or fire to sit beside The same flame that destroys offers zero comfort; it leaves only cold desolation. • Job 20:26 speaks of “a fire unfanned” that consumes and leaves nothing. • Lamentations 4:11 records how the LORD “kindled a fire in Zion that has consumed her foundations”—nothing soothing remained. • Revelation 18:9-10 shows the world watching Babylon’s smoke from a distance, powerless to help and terrified to come near. The lesson: judgment fire is not a cozy hearth; it is a consuming blaze that strips away every illusion of safety. summary Isaiah 47:14 dismantles the false security of Babylon’s spiritual experts. Like dry straw, they ignite under God’s righteous flame, unable to rescue themselves or others. The fire that falls offers no warmth, only total loss. Scripture consistently affirms that anyone or anything set against the LORD—no matter how sophisticated—faces the same outcome: swift, certain, and inescapable judgment. True safety is found only in humble trust and obedience to the one living God who controls the fire. |
    |