47:8
Now therefore hear this, O pampered lady,
securely enthroned, thinking to herself,
I exist, and other than me there is nothing;
I shall not be widowed or bereaved of children:
Babylon, securely enthroned, thinking to herself, “I exist and other than me there is nothing”. Here we have Babylon or this whole system or those who belong to it or this entity assuming Godlike attributes. Because God exists and other than God there is nothing, Isaiah has said so a number of times. Other than God, there is nothing. Without God, we are nothing. Here, she is arrogating to herself those kinds of powers. So at this point, in the progression of things, she is assuming divine status, just like the King of Babylon tries to assume divine status, and have the whole world worship him. So she is becoming that way and that is an anti-God stance, which when it comes to that point, God makes an end of her. When she becomes anti-God. When she becomes anti-God, she becomes anti-His people. People become anti-Christs. Very much like Hitler during the Second World War. He focused on the Jewish people to make an end of them. That is an anti-Christ or anti-God stance and when he does that, he will come to an end. The Lord will make an end of him. She says, “I exist and other than me there is nothing, I shall not be widowed or bereaved of children.” She has plenty of people to support her system, as we saw in chapter twenty-three. Tyre has plenty of colonies; her merchandising centers or ports are all over the world and those are like her children, her offspring. She’s only becoming more entrenched, she thinks, in power, and in authority all over the world. Nothing is going to change that.
47:9
Bereavement and widowhood
shall suddenly overtake you, both in one day.
They shall come upon you in full,
notwithstanding your many magical feats
and exceedingly strong combinations.
These are a woman’s greatest fear, for those are a shame and a disgrace, “shall suddenly overtake you all in one day.” The day, of course, is a rhetorical link to the Day of Judgment. So, in that Day of Judgment, the end of days, the end-time of the world, Isaiah defines that day as a three-year period of judgment and destruction. There, things will suddenly overtake her, very suddenly, very quickly. And all the great destructions of the Old Testament, you look at them and most of them happen very suddenly and very quickly and unexpectedly; like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That was sudden and unexpected. The destruction of Pharaoh and his army, that was sudden. Those things were not expected.
“They shall come upon you in full measure of covenant curses. Notwithstanding your many magical feats and exceedingly strong combinations.” This technology of Babylon, this promotion and sell and manufacturing and sell of the works of men’s hands has certain magical attributes, a certain magical thing about it. And you look at today’s technology, for example, and it blows you away. In spite of all that, in spite of the unions, various unions and conspiratorial forces that combine to form exceedingly strong combinations, that system is still very vulnerable when the Lord acts. Men think it is strong, men think it is in place and can’t be moved. There are so many people involved. Like Jeremiah says of Babylon: “Her wounds are incurable”. She can’t be mended; she has certain flaws, certain fundamental flaws in the system that will eventually bring about its destruction. Why? Because when she oppresses Zion, what is she doing? Where the harlot Babylon oppresses Zion, this is very much like fairy stories. The archetypes in fairy stories are the essentially the same as in Isaiah. We have the oppressive stepmother here who oppresses the innocent princess. She is of royal birth and that’s what the harlot Babylon does. She oppresses the woman Zion. So, these are archetypes we are talking about. When she does so, she is bringing upon herself the curses of the covenant the Lord made with his people. Right? With Zion.
If the people of Zion get their act together and begin to observe the laws of the covenant then God is bound by covenant to deliver her from oppression, from bondage, and from threats to her life. The way that He does it is by bringing the covenant curses of his covenant upon those who deny her rights; who infringe upon her rights. In this case it is Babylon. That is why ‘bereavement and widowhood’ are common covenant curses, why they come upon her in full. Now, there is no mercy for her. She showed no mercy. Now, she also receives no mercy.
All the way through Isaiah you will notice that whenever the King of Babylon, the King of Assyria, or Babylon, whatever they do to the Lord’s people happens to them too.
47:10
Secure in your wickedness,
you thought, No one discerns me.
By your skill and science you were led astray,
thinking to yourself, I exist,
and there is none besides me!
Wickedness, the opposite of righteousness. You thought: No one discerns me”. No one discerns Babylon really for what it is. All those who are caught up with it and are in the middle of it don’t really realize what it is really doing to them. If people who are in bondage in Egypt; if you’re born into bondage don’t you just accept that is what it is like—that that is life. This is how it is. Babylon has grown stronger and stronger in its power over time and in its ability to control people and yet it creeps up so slowly on them that they don’t realize just what it is doing to them. We pay half of our income, in some cases, to taxes now. We just think that is normal. Right? You look in the bible and the people who were taxed to that degree they considered themselves to be in grievous bondage. And yet, we think, this is just normal. We don’t discern Babylon for what it really is what it is doing to us. “No one discerns me”, she says. She’s getting away with it.
“By your skill and science you are led astray. Thinking to yourself I exist and there is nothing or there is none besides me”. Again, arrogating to herself divine powers, as if she were God. She stands in the place of God to those whom she oppresses. Also the term ‘skill and science’ indicates that there is a very sophisticated technology involved here. And because that technology, in and of itself, is probably good, people think, “This is wonderful!” but when the same technology, which is, in and of itself is good, is used to control and oppress to keep people in bondage then in becomes evil and it works against her.
47:11
Catastrophe shall overtake you,
which you shall not know how to avert by bribes;b
disaster shall befall you
from which you cannot ransom yourself:
there shall come upon you sudden ruin
such as you have not imagined.
Because that has been the order of the day, if a problem occurs, just bribe somebody and that takes care of that. You can bribe it away. Not this one, this is going to be a different kind of trouble. “Disaster shall befall you from which you cannot ransom yourself”. Who’s ransomed though? Is someone going to be ransomed out of it? Yes. The people of Zion are going to be ransomed out of it. The Lord keeps saying that over and over, but not Babylon.
“There shall come upon you sudden ruin such as you have not imagined.” When that whole structure collapses, we cannot even imagine what that will be like. It will be like the whole world comes to an end. That is why it is called the end of the world, the end of the present world. It will be a whole new world. Not the New World Order, I dare say, which is a counterfeit of what it is supposed to be, because that is, more or less, the perpetuation of things the way they are now except with more controls, more oppression, more bondage. But this new world will be free. It will be of a higher order, it will be a new paradise as Isaiah describes it. We can hardly imagine that and we can hardly imagine the destruction that will precede it.
47:12
Persist, then, with your combinations
and with your many magical feats,
at which you have exerted yourself since your youth.
It may still be of use to you;
perhaps you can hinderc it.
Combinations or machinations of people, intrigues, covenants, and orders, and plans and schemes and those kinds of things. Even the occult gets involved and is, perhaps, the center of the whole thing. You see later on in the book of Isaiah they are all a part of Babylon, “and your many magical feats.” Your wonderful technology that just blows people away. But, really, that technology, in and of itself, has nothing to do with Babylon. It is just being utilized for her purposes to dupe people. “…of which you have exerted yourself since your youth.” They will still be of use to you, perhaps you can hinder it. So, now Isaiah is beginning to mock her. Speak of her satirically. It’s been a great effort all this time, if you work a little harder you may be able to avert disaster, you may be able to do something about the trouble that is looming on the horizon.
47:13
But you are powerless, despite all your tactics.
Now let those who unravel the heavens,
who observe the stars
and make predictions month by month,
stand by you and save you!
She is a woman and women do use tactics. Men do too, of course, in certain instances. In spite of these tactics and all the machinations, all of the intrigues, she is really powerless before God who has all power. “Now let that those who unravel the heavens, who observe the stars, and make predictions month by month stand by you and save you.” Why? Because those guys have been predicting a wonderful new age, too-- A New World Order. All the things by the year 2000- we will be doing, and all of the kind of technologies, the architectures, all the things we will be doing in the future. And if we follow these statistics that’s where it will lead us and it will just get bigger and better as time goes on. So, we might as well all have a piece of the pie. A bigger piece for me and a small piece for you, of course, and that’s how it works. And all of that is phony, because those people [Mostly main stream media shills and economists] will not be able to predict what’s going to happen. They have never even conceived that all their schemes are going to come to nothing, so he is mocking them. Now all those guys predict, go ahead, let them predict, see how it measures out as to what is going to happen.
47:14
See, as stubble they are burnt up in the fire,
unable themselves to escape the hand of the flame.
These are no embers to warm anyone;
such is no fire to sit by!
A ‘fire’ is, of course, the Day of Judgment, and the destruction by fire and by the sword. It is also a metaphor to describe the King of Assyria or the King of Babylon who destroys the very entity he represents. The ‘stubble’ is a chaos motif, it is like the ‘dust’, they are reduced to nothing. ‘Unable of themselves to escape the hand of the flame.’ Those who do escape, of course, are the people of Zion. Again, the ‘hand’ is the left hand; the ‘flame’ is also the metaphor describing the King of Babylon or the King of Assyria. “These are no embers to warm anyone. Such is no fire to sit by.” Like the fire of the idolaters, half the pieces they made an idol out of and the other half they burned in the fire and they warm themselves by it. See, he really is just mocking her here. This ‘fire’ is a much greater fire; it’s a very destructive fire. It’s a fire that turns everybody to dust and flying chaff in an instant.
47:15
This is what your procurersd have profited you—
those for whom you have exerted yourself
since your youth—
each deviates his own way;
none is there to save you.
The ‘procurers’ are your salesmen or your pimps
. You’ve exerted yourself in this lifestyle from your youth. This is what you were from the beginning. ‘Each deviates his own way’, because they are all deviants that associate with her, in one way or another; more or less. Everyone who follows the Babylon paradigm is deviant in some way from God—the creator-- from his plan. Some of them in gross ways, some of them not. ‘None is there to save you’. No salvation for Babylon when at the very time there is salvation for Zion because of her righteousness and the servant is there to save her—Zion. So, which do you want to be part of? It’s basically your choice.
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