Isaiah

¹ “Go down, sit in the dust, Virgin Daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, Daughter of the Babylonians. No more will you be called tender or delicate.

² take off your veil. Lift up your skirts, bare your legs, and wade through the streams.

³ and your shame uncovered. I will take vengeance; I will spare no one.”

⁴ is the Holy One of Israel.

⁵ Daughter of the Babylonians; no more will you be called queen of kingdoms.

⁶ 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.

⁷ the eternal queen!’ But you did not consider these things or reflect on what might happen.

⁸ 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.’

⁹ 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.

¹⁰ 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.’

¹¹ 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 and with your many sorceries, which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror.

¹³ Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you.

¹⁴ the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. Here are no coals to warm anyone; here is no fire to sit by.

¹⁵ these you have labored with and trafficked with since childhood. Each of them goes on in his error; there is not one that can save you.