Isaiah 47:12

"Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast labored from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from the things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: it shall not be a coal to warm, nor a fire to sit before. Thus shall the things be unto thee wherein thou hast labored: they that have trafficked with thee from thy youth shall wander everyone to his own quarter; there shall be none to save thee."

Are the vast majority of human beings today trusting anything any more substantial than these objects of misplaced trust in ancient Babylon? Behold the millions that are trusting in alcohol or drugs, that are given continually and without intermission to pleasures, who feel secure in their complacent rejection of God's Word and his imperatives for all men, who, to all intents and purposes, are saying by their actions, "I am, and there is none else besides me!" who give no more thought regarding God Almighty himself than if he did not exist? As a nation today, we are investing $3,000,000,000 annually in astrological readings, the signs of the Zodiac, etc.; and there is a full quarter-page of such nonsense every day in the daily newspapers. In every large city, there may be found in every square mile of them some "Madam So and So," reading palms or something, predicting futures, solving problems, and guiding lives by the same old black arts found in ancient civilizations. Who bothers to seek God and to pray about his needs or problems?

Family ties are greatly strained; the Biblical conception of monogamous marriage is threatened by the "live in" libertines; and every department store in the nation adds a surcharge of at least 15 percent to protect themselves from shop-lifting. Such people are materialists, living only for material rewards, and measuring themselves and all whom they know by material standards alone. God have mercy upon our new race of Babylonians.

"The reference to `monthly prognosticators' (Isaiah 47:13) apparently refers to the monthly reports which the official astronomers at the various observatories in the empire were required to send in every month to the king."[13] They certainly missed it in that month in which the drunken Belshazzar was slain.

Barnes' comment on this chapter is appropriate:

"This chapter contains some very particular statements about the manner in which Babylon was to be destroyed, statements which were fulfilled with remarkable accuracy. They are statements that could not have been the result of conjecture, nor of mere political sagacity; and it should be borne in remembrance that this prophecy was uttered one hundred fifty years before its fulfillment."[14]

The last two verses here are very similar to the flight and disappearance of all Nineveh's previous allies as soon as God's judgment fell upon her. The traffickers, whether applied to the merchants, or to the traffickers in the black arts, will not be around when they are needed. The statement that each shall wander to his own quarter, does not mean "his quarter of the city," but rather that he shall go about his business and leave Babylon to perish. This is exactly what was prophesied of Nineveh in Nahum 2:8. "They shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land (Isaiah 13:14)."[15]