John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 47:9

"but these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood; in their full measure shall they come upon thee, in the multitude of thy sorceries, and the great abundance of thine enchantments." — Isaiah 47:9 (ASV)

But those two things shall suddenly come to thee. Because Babylon supposed that she was beyond the reach of all danger, the Prophet threatens her with very severe distress. When she said that she would be neither “a widow” nor “childless,” he declares, on the other hand, that both calamities will come upon her, so that her miserable destitution will expose her to the utmost contempt.

In their perfection. That is, “completely,” so that in all respects, without any exception, she will be childless. There is also an implied contrast between moderate punishment, for which some alleviation might be expected, and the dreadful vengeance of God, which has no other end than ruin; for, the greater the confidence with which wicked men are elated, the more severely they are punished.

For the multitude of thy divinations. Some render this term diviners; but I think that it denotes the act or the vice rather than the persons. Some explain ב (beth) to mean “on account of,” and understand it to express a cause; and in this sense, it frequently occurs in Scripture. Yet it might be suitably interpreted that the Babylonians will derive no aid or relief from the deceitful skill in divinations of which they boasted so much; and so it might be translated notwithstanding; as if he had said, “The abundance of divinations or auguries will not prevent these things from happening to Babylon.”

He ridicules the confidence they placed in their useless auguries, by which they thought they foresaw future events. But, as we will shortly afterwards dwell more largely on this point, I readily admit that it is here reckoned to be one of the causes of the vengeance inflicted on them: that, in consequence of trusting to such delusions, they dreaded nothing.