1
‘Go down, sit in the dust,
    Virgin Daughter Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne,
    queen city of the Babylonians.
No more will you be called
    tender or delicate.
2
Take millstones and grind flour;
    take off your veil.
Lift up your skirts, bare your legs,
    and wade through the streams.
3
Your nakedness will be exposed
    and your shame uncovered.
I will take vengeance;
    I will spare no one.’
4
Our Redeemer – the Lord Almighty is his name –
    is the Holy One of Israel.
5
‘Sit in silence, go into darkness,
    queen city of the Babylonians;
no more will you be called
    queen of kingdoms.
6
I was angry with my people
    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
You said, “I am for ever –
    the eternal queen!”
But you did not consider these things
    or reflect on what might happen.
8
‘Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
    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
Both of these will overtake you
    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
You have trusted in your wickedness
    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
Disaster will come upon you,
    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
‘Keep on, then, with your magic spells
    and with your many sorceries,
    which you have laboured at since childhood.
Perhaps you will succeed,
    perhaps you will cause terror.
13
All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!
    Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
    let them save you from what is coming upon you.
14
Surely they are like stubble;
    the fire will burn them up.
They cannot even save themselves
    from the power of the flame.
These are not coals for warmth;
    this is not a fire to sit by.
15
That is all they are to you –
    these you have dealt with
    and laboured with since childhood.
All of them go on in their error;
    there is not one that can save you.