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Humiliation of Babylon and Israel's Unfaithfulness

19:22 recording · EN · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

God judges Babylon and Israel alike, yet marks and redeems those who mourn true worship.

  1. Pride, not power, brings Babylon downBabylon said in her heart 'I am, and there is no one besides me', and Isaiah 47 answers with vengeance no sorcery can avert.
  2. Judgment on Israel comes with a promise of rescueIsaiah 48 condemns Israel's unfaithfulness but names God as Redeemer who still intends to restore those who turn back.
  3. The tau mark prefigures the crossThose who mourned the temple's abominations were marked on the forehead and spared, which Father Mike ties to baptism and Ash Wednesday.
Executive Summary AI
  • Father Mike Schmitz opens day 213 of the Bible in a Year podcast, reading Isaiah 47 and 48, Ezekiel 8 and 9, and Proverbs 12:13-16 from the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition.0:21
  • Isaiah 47 announces the humiliation of Babylon: the virgin daughter of Babylon is told to sit in the dust, her sorceries and star-gazers cannot save her, and loss of children and widowhood come on her in one day.1:13
  • Isaiah 48 turns the same word on Israel, calling the people obstinate and treacherous from birth, yet God says he defers his anger for his own name's sake, refines them in the furnace of affliction, and calls himself their Redeemer who would have made their peace like a river.3:31
  • In Ezekiel 8 the prophet is lifted by a lock of his hair in a vision to the Jerusalem temple, where he sees creeping things and idols on the wall, 70 elders with censers, women weeping for Tammuz, and about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple worshipping the sun; in chapter 9 six executioners are sent through the city while a man clothed in linen marks the foreheads of those who sigh an6:50
  • In the reflection Father Mike explains that the mark is the Hebrew letter tau, a lowercase T shaped like a cross, and connects it to the sign of the cross traced on foreheads at baptism and on Ash Wednesday, calling it a foreshadowing of Christ's death on the cross.17:21
Key Quote
“I am he, I am the first, and I am the last.”
— Father Mike Schmitz5:16
Key Quote
“You said, no one sees me. Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray.”
— Father Mike Schmitz13:52
Key Quote
“They did not need God. And so God is humiliating and humbling them.”
— Father Mike Schmitz14:01