The Arrogance of the Instrument: Text: Isaiah 47:5-7
Introduction: God's Hammer and the Sin of Hubris
In the grand sweep of history, God is the sovereign playwright, and nations are His actors. Some are given heroic roles, and others are assigned the part of the villain. But all of them, whether they know it or not, serve His ultimate purposes. God is never flustered. He is never caught off guard. He raises up empires and He casts them down. He anoints a Cyrus, and He uses a Nebuchadnezzar. The Lord of Hosts musters the armies for battle, and sometimes He musters them against His own people when they have forgotten Him and decided to chase after the tin-pot gods of the surrounding morass.
This is the situation we find in our text. God's people, Judah, had become faithless. They had profaned their own inheritance with idolatry and covenant rebellion. And so God, in His righteous anger, did what a loving father must do. He took up the rod of discipline. In this case, that rod was the Babylonian Empire, a brutal, arrogant, and pagan nation. God handed His people over to them for a time, for the purpose of chastisement. It was a severe mercy, a necessary surgery.
But here is where a crucial distinction must be made, a distinction our modern, sentimental age struggles to grasp. God can use a wicked instrument for a righteous purpose without ever approving of the instrument's wickedness. The hammer God uses to shape His people is still accountable for being a cruel hammer. Babylon was God's tool to discipline Judah, but Babylon went too far. They mistook God's permissive will for His stamp of approval. They took the task of discipline and turned it into an opportunity for sadistic cruelty, driven by their own bottomless pride. They did not see themselves as a temporary rod in the hand of Jehovah; they saw themselves as the queen of the universe, answerable to no one.
And so, in this passage, God turns His attention from the unfaithfulness of His own people to the arrogance of the instrument He used to correct them. He pronounces judgment on Babylon not for carrying out His sentence, but for the manner in which they did it, and the pride that fueled their every action. This is a timeless lesson. It is a warning to every nation, every institution, and every individual who is ever given a measure of power. God opposes the proud. And when a nation begins to believe its own press releases, when it declares itself to be queen forever, it is already sitting on a trap door, and God's hand is on the lever.
The Text
"Sit silently, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans, For you will no longer be called The queen of kingdoms. I was furious with My people; I profaned My inheritance And gave them into your hand. You did not show compassion to them, On the aged you made your yoke very heavy. Yet you said, ‘I will be a queen forever.’ These things you did not put on your heart Nor remember the outcome of them."
(Isaiah 47:5-7 LSB)
The Title Revoked (v. 5)
The judgment begins with a command that reverses Babylon's entire identity.
"Sit silently, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans, For you will no longer be called The queen of kingdoms." (Isaiah 47:5)
Babylon was loud, bright, and proud. Her glory was a spectacle. Her power was broadcast in every corner of the known world. God's command here is a total negation of her public persona. First, "Sit silently." The boisterous, arrogant voice of the empire is to be silenced. The shouting, the boasting, the decrees, the self-praise, all of it is to cease. She who commanded the world is now commanded to shut her mouth. This is the shame of being rendered irrelevant.
Second, "go into darkness." The dazzling city, the center of culture and power, is to be extinguished. Her light is going out. This is a sentence of obscurity and disgrace. She will be removed from the center stage of history and relegated to the shadows, a footnote, a ruin for tourists and archaeologists to poke around in. This is not just a military defeat; it is a cultural and historical erasure.
And why? "For you will no longer be called The queen of kingdoms." This was her title, her brand, her self-conception. She was not just a kingdom, but the queen over all other kingdoms. She saw herself as the pinnacle of civilization, the final word in human government. But God informs her that this title is not inherent; it was a temporary descriptor, and the time of its validity is over. God is revoking her credentials. He is stripping her of her name because her name was built on a lie, the lie of self-generated supremacy.
The Instrument's Overreach (v. 6)
In verse 6, God explains the background of the situation and lays the specific charge against Babylon. This is the heart of the matter.
"I was furious with My people; I profaned My inheritance And gave them into your hand. You did not show compassion to them, On the aged you made your yoke very heavy." (Isaiah 47:6)
First, God takes full responsibility for the situation. "I was furious with My people; I profaned My inheritance And gave them into your hand." God is the primary actor here. Judah's exile was not an accident. It was not a case of Babylon simply being stronger. It was a deliberate act of divine judgment. God Himself "profaned" His own inheritance, meaning He treated them as common, setting aside their special, protected status because of their sin. He handed them over. This is the doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty, and it is a hard doctrine, but it is the bedrock of all sanity. If God is not in charge of even the painful things, then we are left with chaos, and there is no hope in that.
But the second half of the verse pivots to human responsibility. God gave Judah into Babylon's hand for a purpose, but He did not give them a blank check for cruelty. The charge is twofold. First, "You did not show compassion to them." Babylon's job was to be a rod of discipline, not a butcher's knife. They took no pleasure in righteousness; they took pleasure in cruelty. They were not soberly carrying out a divine sentence; they were reveling in the suffering of others. They were motivated by sadism, not justice.
The second charge is a specific example of this cruelty: "On the aged you made your yoke very heavy." This is a profound indictment. A society's true character is revealed in how it treats its most vulnerable, the very young and the very old. The yoke was a symbol of servitude and oppression. To lay a heavy yoke on a strong young man was harsh; to lay a very heavy one on the elderly, on grandfathers and grandmothers, was the height of gratuitous, godless cruelty. It demonstrated a complete lack of decency, a contempt for the image of God in man. Babylon was not just punishing a rebellious nation; they were spitting in the face of God by crushing those who were weakest and most deserving of honor.
The Amnesia of Arrogance (v. 7)
Verse 7 reveals the root cause of Babylon's cruelty. It was not just bloodlust; it was a theological error of the highest magnitude.
"Yet you said, ‘I will be a queen forever.’ These things you did not put on your heart Nor remember the outcome of them." (Isaiah 47:7)
Here is the voice of pride. "I will be a queen forever." Babylon believed its position was permanent, that its power was inherent. They saw their success not as a temporary assignment from a sovereign God, but as their eternal right. They were guilty of what we might call chronological arrogance. They could not imagine a world without them at the center of it. This is the native language of every proud and dying empire. It is the language of Rome, of Britain, and it is increasingly the language of a secular West that believes it is the end of history.
And this arrogance led directly to a fatal amnesia. "These things you did not put on your heart Nor remember the outcome of them." What things? The fact that God gave His people into their hand. The fact that their power was delegated. They forgot they were a tool. They started to think they were the craftsman. They did not consider the "outcome," the latter end. They failed to ask the most important question any person or nation with power can ask: "And then what?" They assumed a straight, unending line of glory, but history, under God, is not a straight line; it is a story with a plot, with twists, with judgment. Babylon forgot that he who is the Lord of the beginning is also the Lord of the end. They did not remember that God always, always, brings the proud down.
This is the essence of folly. To live in God's world, using God's air, exercising God's delegated authority, all while refusing to think about God or the inevitable consequences of defying Him. It is to be a tenant who thinks he is the landlord, and the day of eviction is always a surprise.
Conclusion: The Accountable Instrument
The message of this passage is sharp and clear, and it cuts across the centuries. God is sovereign, and He is just. He will discipline His people when they stray, and He may use the most unlikely and ungodly of instruments to do it. We should not be surprised when we see the church in a particular nation undergoing a time of testing and pressure at the hands of a hostile, secular government. God is still in the business of purifying His people.
But let this also be a thunderous warning to any power that sets itself against God's people. God takes note of your methods. He sees your cruelty. He hears your proud boasts. He measures the weight of the yoke you place on the weak. And while He may use you for a season, your own day of accounting will come. To mistake God's patience for His approval is a fatal error. To believe that your power is your own, and that you will be "queen forever," is to book your own ticket to the dust, to silence, and to darkness.
For the people of God, the lesson is one of humility and hope. Humility, because we must recognize that our sins have consequences, and God's discipline is a sign of His love, not His abandonment. Hope, because our ultimate security is not in our own faithfulness, but in His. Our Redeemer has a name, the Lord of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel. And He will not allow the rod of discipline to become a serpent. He will judge the arrogant instrument, and He will vindicate His people. The queen of kingdoms will fall, but His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and of His dominion there will be no end.