1 "Get down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground with no throne, daughter of the Chaldeans! For no one will call you soft and pampered anymore.
2 Take the hand mill and grind flour; lift off your veil, strip off your skirt, bare your legs, wade through rivers.
3 Your nakedness will be exposed, your shame will be in full view. I will take vengeance, and I will not meet with anyone."
4 Our Redeemer, whose name is the LORD of hosts, is the Holy One of Israel.
5 "Sit in silence and go into the dark, daughter of the Chaldeans, for no one will call you queen of kingdoms anymore.
6 I was angry with my people; I let my inheritance be defiled and handed them over to you. You showed them no compassion; even on the old you laid your yoke very heavily.
7 You said, 'I will be queen forever,' and so you did not take these things to heart or think about how it would end.
8 So now listen to this, you lover of luxury, who sit there without a care, who say to yourself, 'I am, and there is none but me; I will never sit as a widow or know what it is to lose my children.'
9 Both of these will come upon you in a moment, in a single day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full force, for all your many sorceries and the great might of your spells.
10 You felt safe in your wickedness; you said, 'No one sees me.' Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you off course, and you said to yourself, 'I am, and there is none but me.'
11 But disaster will come upon you that you will not know how to charm away; calamity will fall on you that you cannot buy off; ruin will come upon you suddenly, before you know it.
12 Keep at your spells, then, and your many sorceries, which you have toiled over since your youth; maybe you can gain something by them, maybe you can make people tremble.
13 You are worn out by all your counselors. Let them stand up and save you, those who map out the heavens, who stare at the stars, who announce month by month what is going to happen to you.
14 See, they have become like straw; fire burns them up. They cannot rescue themselves from the grip of the flame. This is no coal to warm oneself by, no fire to sit beside!
15 That is what they will be to you, those you have toiled with, your traders from your youth; each one wanders off his own way, and there is no one to save you.