Isaiah 47:12

The prophetic text addresses these words to [Babylon] in an ironic manner: stick to your habitual magic; stick to your customary incantations. It is likely that you will escape from misfortunes that besiege you! Then he proclaims the vainness of these practices.

(Verse 12 and following) Stand with your sorcerers, and with the multitude of your evil deeds, in which you have labored since your youth, if perhaps it will benefit you, or if you can become stronger. You have failed in the multitude of your plans: let the astrologers of the heavens stand and save you, who observe the stars and calculate the months, to announce to you what is to come. Behold, they have become like stubble, fire has burned them up: they will not deliver their souls from the hand of the flame: there are no coals to warm themselves, nor a fire to sit beside: thus have they become to you in all your labors: each of your merchants has wandered in his own way since your youth: there is no one to save you. LXX: Stand now in your incantations and in your many sorceries, which you have learned from your youth, if they can be of any help to you; and you have labored in your counsels: let the astrologers of the sky stand and save you, those who look at the stars and tell you what is coming upon you. See, they will all be consumed like stubble in the fire; they will not deliver themselves from the flame; for you have coals of fire, and you will sit upon them. They will be for your help. You have labored in your change from youth: man has wandered in himself: but there will be no salvation for you. The reading of the Prophet Daniel proves to have had all of Babylon and all of Chaldea, the study of sorcerers and soothsayers and diviners and exorcists, whom we call haruspices, whom for their advice he recounts as having done all things for the Babylonian kings. Also, because we have interpreted it according to Symmachus and Theodotion: Let the astrologers of the heavens stand and save you, the Seventy have translated more explicitly, Let the astronomers of the heavens stand and make you safe; who are commonly called mathematicians, and by the course and movement of the stars, they judge human affairs to be governed. And so the Magi from the East came, saying that they had seen the Lord's star, either through the knowledge of their art or through the prophecy of their own prophet Balaam, who had said in Numbers: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall come forth from Israel (Num. XXIV, 17). Therefore, these people who calculate months and count years, and weigh the moments of hours, promise knowledge of the future. Let them tell you what the Lord…