“Come down and sit in the dust, O maiden daughter of Baḇel. Sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For no more do they call you tender and delicate. “Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, lift up the skirt, uncover the leg, pass through rivers. “Let your nakedness be uncovered, let your shame also be exposed. I take vengeance, and meet no man.” Our Redeemer, יהוה of hosts is His Name, the Set-apart One of Yisra’ĕl. “Sit silent, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For no more do they call you Mistress of Reigns. “I was wroth with My people, I have profaned My inheritance and I gave them into your hand. You showed them no compassion, you made your yoke very heavy on the elderly. “And you said, ‘I am mistress forever,’ so that you did not take these *matters* to heart, and did not remember the latter end of them. “And now, hear this, you who are given to pleasures, who dwells complacently, who says in your heart, ‘I am, and there is none but me. I do not sit as a widow, nor do I know the loss of children.’ “Both of these come to you suddenly, in one day: the loss of children, and widowhood. They shall come upon you in completeness, because of your many witchcrafts, for your numerous great potent spells. “And you have trusted in your evil, you have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you astray. And you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is none but me.’ “But evil shall come upon you, you not knowing from where it arises, and trouble fall upon you, you being unable to put it off, and ruin come upon you suddenly, which you know not. “Stand now with your potent spells and your many witchcrafts, in which you have laboured from your youth, if so be you are able to profit, if so be you find strength. “You are exhausted by your many counsels; let the astrologers, the stargazers, and those who prognosticate by the new moons stand up and save you from what is coming upon you. “See, they shall be as stubble, fire shall burn them, they do not deliver themselves from the power of the flame, there is not a coal to be warmed by, nor a fire to sit before it! “So they shall be to you with whom you have laboured, your merchants from your youth. They shall wander, each one his own way, there is none to save you.

(Isaiah 47:1-15 [TS1998])