Isaiah 47:1
"Go down and sit in the dust, O Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, O Daughter of Chaldea! For you will no longer be called tender or delicate.
Sermons
Humiliation the Divine Judgment on PrideR. Tuck Isaiah 47:1, 2
Dirge on the Downfall of BabylonA. B. Davidson, D. D.Isaiah 47:1-3
The Fall of BabylonE. Johnson Isaiah 47:1-15














This is a scoffing song at the overthrow of Babylon. It is divided into four nearly equal stanzas. Luxury, ambition, and the practice of magic - the one sin worse than the others - were prevalent at Babylon. Each of these is lashed in the first three stanzas. There is a climax, the scorn of the prophet reaching its highest point in the last stanza (Ewald). Spiritually considered, the picture may represent the course of "this present world" in its godless pride.

I. BABYLON AS TYPICAL OF LUXURY. The city in ancient fancy is ever thought of as a woman - in all her beauty and glory, or in all her shame. The great city here appears as the haughty and luxurious courtesan. The just judgment has fallen upon her impurity. She is violently torn away from her life of softness and refinement, and reduced to the status of a common slave - has to ply the hard labour of grinding meal (Exodus 11:5, 12; Job 31:10). Or, like a captive stripped of all her finery, she has to wade barefoot through streams. Every hidden shame will be exposed to the light of day. Only in Israel - as Isaiah 42-46, have repeatedly proclaimed - is salvation to be found. These calamities of the proud city are in retribution for her sins - the just vengeance of an offended God.

II. BABYLON AS TYPICAL OF PRIDE AND AMBITION. This "daughter of the Chaldeans" is no longer to be termed "lady, or mistress, of kingdoms." When Jehovah was wroth with his people, and desecrated his heritage, giving them into her hands, she showed no pity, but laid a heavy yoke upon the aged, thinking in her heart, "1 shall be mistress for ever." She did not consider the end, which has now come upon her. While Israel enjoys freedom, she must pass into the darkness of the prison-house (Isaiah 42:7, 22).

III. AS TYPICAL OF SUPERSTITION. In her carelessness and pride she has exalted herself above Jehovah (Zephaniah 2:15). She thinks she will never lose her protector, the Chaldean king; and her children, the stout burghers of the city. But sudden conquest will deprive her of both, and she will be as a widow, forlorn. Her third and inexcusable sin is superstition. Her wisdom and science have led her astray to a point of blinding self-conceit. But now an evil has come upon her which no incantations and spells can charm away - a mischief for which none of her rites can atone. Her false confidence has blinded her to the true faith in the eternal God (with vers. 10, 11, cf. Isaiah 45:18; Isaiah 19:11, etc.). And tile result must be sudden and crushing ruin.

IV. BABYLON'S FALL AS TYPICAL OF THE WISDOM THAT IS BROUGHT TO NOUGHT. What can all her learned astrologers and magicians do for her now - they whose guidance has so long been followed (cf. Isaiah 46:6, 7; Isaiah 44:12; Isaiah 43:23)? Let them stand by her in her need, those star-gazers and moon-gazers. But all are dumb, and, so far from helping, flee for their own safety from the fire - no gently warming hearth-fire (Isaiah 44:16), but one most horrible and devouring, from which there is no escape (Isaiah 1:11; Isaiah 33:11-14; Isaiah 5:24).

V. LESSONS. All the great sins are connected together as links in a chain. They are drawn as with a cart-rope. Sensuality and luxury bring pride and contempt in their train; and these, again, blindness and bewilderment of mind. And where no affliction nor humiliation have been known, there will be no sympathy nor pity towards others. Yet religion is ever a necessity to man; and, if the true religion be rejected, some counterfeit must take its place. The most foolish and the darkest superstitions flourish in such times. So it was again when Christianity was making its way in the decaying Roman world. True religion, rooted in humanity and the fear of God, and in light-loving intelligence, alone can deliver the nation and the individual. - J.

Come down, and sit in the dust.
Babylon is pictured as a royal lady, dethroned, led in captivity over the streams to a distant land, and there made the meanest slave behind the millstones.

(A. B. Davidson, D. D.)

People
Babylonians, Isaiah
Places
Babylon
Topics
Babylon, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Daughter, Delicate, Dust, Ground, Sit, Tender, Throne, Virgin
Outline
1. God's judgment upon Babylon and Chaldea
6. For their unmercifulness
7. Pride
10. And over-boldness
11. Shall be irresistible

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 47:1

     5740   virgin
     5966   tenderness

Isaiah 47:1-2

     4482   millstones

Isaiah 47:1-4

     6722   redemption, OT

Isaiah 47:1-15

     4215   Babylon

Library
Humility is the Root of Charity, and Meekness the Fruit of Both. ...
Humility is the root of charity, and meekness the fruit of both. There is no solid and pure ground of love to others, except the rubbish of self-love be first cast out of the soul; and when that superfluity of naughtiness is cast out, then charity hath a solid and deep foundation: "The end of the command is charity out of a pure heart," 1 Tim. i. 5. It is only such a purified heart, cleansed from that poison and contagion of pride and self-estimation, that can send out such a sweet and wholesome
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Iranian Conquest
Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving in Coste and Flandin. The vignette, drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in Southern Russia, represents a young Scythian. The Iranian religions--Cyrus in Lydia and at Babylon: Cambyses in Egypt --Darius and the organisation of the empire. The Median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a time over the destinies of a portion of Western Asia. The reason of this is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration:
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 9

How Christ is the Way in General, "I am the Way. "
We come now to speak more particularly to the words; and, first, Of his being a way. Our design being to point at the way of use-making of Christ in all our necessities, straits, and difficulties which are in our way to heaven; and particularly to point out the way how believers should make use of Christ in all their particular exigencies; and so live by faith in him, walk in him, grow up in him, advance and march forward toward glory in him. It will not be amiss to speak of this fulness of Christ
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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