Yesaya 47:11

47:11 Disaster will overtake you;

you will not know how to charm it away. ¹ 

Destruction will fall on you;

you will not be able to appease it.

Calamity will strike you suddenly,

before you recognize it. ² 

Yeremia 18:18

Jeremiah Petitions the Lord to Punish Those Who Attack Him

18:18 Then some people ³  said, “Come on! Let us consider how to deal with Jeremiah! ⁴  There will still be priests to instruct us, wise men to give us advice, and prophets to declare God’s word. ⁵  Come on! Let’s bring charges against him and get rid of him! ⁶  Then we will not need to pay attention to anything he says.”

Yehezkiel 20:1-3

Israel’s Rebellion

20:1 In the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, ⁷  some of the elders ⁸  of Israel came to seek ⁹  the Lord, and they sat down in front of me. 20:2 The word of the Lord came to me: 20:3 “Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and tell them: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Are you coming to seek me? As surely as I live, I will not allow you to seek me, ¹⁰  declares the sovereign Lord.’

Amos 8:11

8:11 Be certain of this, ¹¹  the time is ¹²  coming,” says the sovereign Lord,

“when I will send a famine through the land –

not a shortage of food or water

but an end to divine revelation! ¹³ 

Mikha 3:6

3:6 Therefore night will fall, and you will receive no visions; ¹⁴ 

it will grow dark, and you will no longer be able to read the omens. ¹⁵ 

The sun will set on these prophets,

and the daylight will turn to darkness over their heads. ¹⁶ 

[47:11]  ¹ tc The Hebrew text has שַׁחְרָהּ (shakhrah), which is either a suffixed noun (“its dawning,” i.e., origin) or infinitive (“to look early for it”). Some have suggested an emendation to שַׁחֲדָהּ (shakhadah), a suffixed infinitive from שָׁחַד (shakhad, “[how] to buy it off”; see BDB 1005 s.v. שָׁחַד). This forms a nice parallel with the following couplet. The above translation is based on a different etymology of the verb in question. HALOT 1466 s.v. III שׁחר references a verbal root with these letters (שׁחד) that refers to magical activity.

[47:11]  ² tn Heb “you will not know”; NIV “you cannot foresee.”

[18:18]  ³ tn Heb “They.” The referent is unidentified; “some people” has been used in the translation.

[18:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “Let us make plans against Jeremiah.” See 18:18 where this has sinister overtones as it does here.

[18:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “Instruction will not perish from priest, counsel from the wise, word from the prophet.”

[18:18]  sn These are the three channels through whom God spoke to his people in the OT. See Jer 8:8-10 and Ezek 7:26.

[18:18]  ⁶ tn Heb “Let us smite him with our tongues.” It is clear from the context that this involved plots to kill him.

[20:1]  ⁷ sn The date would be August 14th, 591 b.c. The seventh year is the seventh year of Jehoiachin’s exile.

[20:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “men from the elders.”

[20:1]  ⁹ tn See the note at 14:3.

[20:3]  ¹⁰ tn Or “I will not reveal myself to you.”

[8:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[8:11]  ¹² tn Heb “the days are.”

[8:11]  ¹³ tn Heb “not a hunger for food or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord.”

[3:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “it will be night for you without a vision.”

[3:6]  sn The coming of night (and darkness in the following line) symbolizes the cessation of revelation.

[3:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “it will be dark for you without divination.”

[3:6]  sn The reading of omens (Heb “divination”) was forbidden in the law (Deut 18:10), so this probably reflects the prophets’ view of how they received divine revelation.

[3:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and the day will be dark over them.”