Isaiah 47:14-15

However, their powers would be no match for the consuming judgment of God that was coming on them like a fire. It would sweep everything in its path away, the astrologers as well as their predictions. They would become the fuel for this fire that would be like a wild forest fire, not a comfortable campfire.

"They [the astrologers] do not even have the enduring power of wood in the fire, for they are consumed instantly [as stubble], and are not able to save themselves from the flame that devours them. If they cannot save themselves it is foolish to look to them to save Babylon." [Note: Young, 3:243.]

False religion offers the comfort of a fire, but it turns into a furnace of destruction. The philosophical leaders of Babylon would not be saviors in that day of judgment. In fact, there would be none to save then.

"These few words at the end of Isaiah 47:15 capture the whole argument of chs. 40-47: everybody needs a savior; the gods and the magical worldview on which they rest cannot save; the Lord who stands outside the cosmos and directs it according to his good purposes can save; which shall we choose?" [Note: Oswalt, The Book . . . 40-66, p. 256.]

The fulfillment of this prophecy came when Cyrus invaded Babylon in 539 B.C. But the similarities between this chapter and Revelation 17, 18 remind us that a future eschatological destruction of Babylon is also coming.

"Those who have turned from the living God to the daily horoscope in our own society would do well to heed this passage." [Note: Grogan, p. 278.]

"The point of chapters 41-47 is that the entire structure and system of the Babylonian Empire (represented by her idols) was developed by humans [cf. the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11]; Babylon had no lasting divine sanction. Just as an idol is of human fabrication, with no autonomous power or usefulness of its own, so the entire Babylonian system of society, economics, and politics was a human fabrication which in time would collapse. Israel, then, must reserve her worship, her ultimate commitment, for YHWH. This commitment must stand above all other systems and values. YHWH may grant these systems (including Assyria, Persia) temporary sanction to do his will, but he also reserves the right to repudiate and destroy them. Only YHWH deserves worship." [Note: John D. W. Watts, "Babylonian Idolatry in the Prophets As a False Socio-Economic System," in Israel’s Apostasy and Restoration: Essays in Honor of Roland K. Harrison, p. 121.]