Albert Barnes Commentary Isaiah 47:11

"Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know the dawning thereof: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it away: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou knowest not." — Isaiah 47:11 (ASV)

Therefore will evil come upon you - In consequence of your pride and self-confidence; of the prevalence of corruption, licentiousness, and sin; of the prevalence of the arts of magic and of divination abounding there; and of the cruel and unfeeling oppression of the people of God; for all these crimes ruin will come certainly and suddenly upon you.

You will not know from where it comes - Margin, ‘The morning thereof.’ The margin expresses the true sense of the phrase.

The word used here (שׁחר shachar) means “the aurora,” the dawn, the morning (see the notes at Isaiah 14:12).

Lowth has strangely rendered it, ‘Evil will come upon you, which you will not know how to deprecate.’

But the word properly means the dawning of the morning, the aurora; and the sense is that calamity would befall them whose rising or dawning they did not see or anticipate.

It would come unexpectedly and suddenly, like the first rays of the morning. It would spring up as if from no antecedent cause that would seem to lead to it, just as light comes suddenly out of the darkness.

And mischief - Destruction; ruin.

You will not be able to put it off - Margin, ‘Expiate.’ This is the sense of the Hebrew (see the notes at Isaiah 43:3).

The meaning is that they could not then avert these calamities by any sacrifices, deprecations, or prayers.

Ruin would suddenly and certainly come; and they had nothing which they could offer to God as an expiation by which it could then be prevented.

We need not say how strikingly descriptive this is of the destruction of Babylon. Her ruin came silently and suddenly upon her, as the first rays of morning light steal upon the world, and in such a way that she could not meet it or turn it away.