Albert Barnes Commentary Isaiah 47:3

"Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and will spare no man." — Isaiah 47:3 (ASV)

Your nakedness - This denotes the abject condition to which the city would be reduced. All its pride would be taken away, and it would be brought to such a state as to fill its inhabitants with the deepest mortification and shame. Vitringa supposes that it means that all the powerlessness and weakness, the vileness, the real poverty, the cruelty, and injustice of Babylon would be exposed. But it more probably means that it would be reduced to the deepest ignominy. No language could more forcibly express the depths of its shame and disgrace than that which the prophet here uses.

I will take vengeance - This expresses literally what had been previously expressed in a figurative manner. The whole purpose of God was to inflict vengeance on her for her pride, her luxury, and oppression, and especially for her lack of kindness toward His people .

And I will not meet you as a man - This phrase has been interpreted in various ways. Jerome renders it: ‘And man will not resist me.’ The Septuagint renders it: ‘I will take what is just from you, and will no longer deliver you up to men.’ The Syriac: ‘I will not allow man to meet you.’ Grotius: ‘I will not allow any man to be an intercessor.’ So Lowth: ‘Neither will I allow man to intercede with me.’ Noyes: ‘I will make peace with none.’ So Gesenius (Lexicon by Robinson) renders it: ‘I will take vengeance, and will not make peace with man; that is, will make peace with none before all are destroyed.’

The word used here (אפגע 'ep^ega‛) is derived from פגע pâga‛—which means “to strike upon” or “to strike against”; “to impinge upon anyone, or anything; to fall upon in a hostile manner” (1 Samuel 22:17); “to kill, to slay” (Judges 8:21; Judges 15:12); “to assail with petitions, to urge, entreat anyone” (Ruth 1:16; Jeremiah 7:16); “to light upon, or meet with anyone” (Genesis 28:11), and then, according to Gesenius, “to strike a league with anyone, to make peace with him.”

Jarchi renders it: ‘I will not ask any man to take vengeance;’ that is, I will do it myself. Aben Ezra: ‘I will not admit the intercession of any man.’ Vitringa renders it: ‘I will take vengeance, and will not have a man to concur with me; that is, although I should not have a man to concur with me who should execute the vengeance which I plan; for this reason I have raised up Cyrus from Persia, of whom no one thought.’ In my view, the meaning that best accords with the usual sense of the word is that proposed by Lowth: that no one should be allowed to interpose or intercede for them.

All the interpretations concur in the same general meaning: that Babylon should be totally destroyed, and that no one—whether by resistance, as Jerome supposes, or by intercession, as Lowth suggests—should be allowed to oppose the execution of the divine purpose of vengeance.