Bilangan 16:38

16:38 As for the censers of these men who sinned at the cost of their lives, ¹  they must be made ²  into hammered sheets for covering the altar, because they presented them before the Lord and sanctified them. They will become a sign to the Israelites.”

Mazmur 71:7

71:7 Many are appalled when they see me, ³ 

but you are my secure shelter.

Yesaya 8:18

8:18 Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me ⁴  are reminders and object lessons ⁵  in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.

[16:38]  ¹ tn The expression is “in/by/against their life.” That they sinned against their life means that they brought ruin to themselves.

[16:38]  ² tn The form is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive. But there is no expressed subject for “and they shall make them,” and so it may be treated as a passive (“they shall [must] be made”).

[71:7]  ³ tn Heb “like a sign [i.e., portent or bad omen] I am to many.”

[8:18]  ⁴ sn This refers to Shear-jashub (7:3) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:1, 3).

[8:18]  ⁵ tn Or “signs and portents” (NAB, NRSV). The names of all three individuals has symbolic value. Isaiah’s name (which meant “the Lord delivers”) was a reminder that the Lord was the nation’s only source of protection; Shear-jashub’s name was meant, at least originally, to encourage Ahaz (see the note at 7:3), and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’s name was a guarantee that God would defeat Israel and Syria (see the note at 8:4). The word מוֹפֶת (mofet, “portent”) can often refer to some miraculous event, but in 20:3 it is used, along with its synonym אוֹת (’ot, “sign”) of Isaiah’s walking around half-naked as an object lesson of what would soon happen to the Egyptians.