Daniel 2:7

2:7 They again replied, “Let the king inform us ¹  of the dream; then we will disclose its ²  interpretation.”

Isaiah 44:25

44:25 who frustrates the omens of the empty talkers ³ 

and humiliates ⁴  the omen readers,

who overturns the counsel of the wise men ⁵ 

and makes their advice ⁶  seem foolish,

Jeremiah 27:9-10

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁷  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ⁸  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ⁹  subject to the king of Babylon.’ 27:10 Do not listen to them, ¹⁰  because their prophecies are lies. ¹¹  Listening to them will only cause you ¹²  to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 27:2

27:2 The Lord told me, ¹⁴  “Make a yoke ¹⁵  out of leather straps and wooden crossbars and put it on your neck.

Jeremiah 3:8-9

3:8 She also saw ¹⁶  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ¹⁷  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ¹⁸  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ¹⁹  3:9 Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land ²⁰  through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone. ²¹ 

¹ tn Aram “his servants.”

² tn Or “the.”

³ tc The Hebrew text has בַּדִּים (baddim), perhaps meaning “empty talkers” (BDB 95 s.v. III בַּד). In the four other occurrences of this word (Job 11:3; Isa 16:6; Jer 48:30; 50:36) the context does not make the meaning of the term very clear. Its primary point appears to be that the words spoken are meaningless or false. In light of its parallelism with “omen readers,” some have proposed an emendation to בָּרִים (barim, “seers”). The Mesopotamian baru-priests were divination specialists who played an important role in court life. See R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 93-98. Rather than supporting an emendation, J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:189, n. 79) suggests that Isaiah used בַּדִּים purposively as a derisive wordplay on the Akkadian word baru (in light of the close similarity of the d and r consonants).

⁴ tn Or “makes fools of” (NIV, NRSV); NAB and NASB both similar.

⁵ tn Heb “who turns back the wise” (so NRSV); NIV “overthrows the learning of the wise”; TEV “The words of the wise I refute.”

⁶ tn Heb “their knowledge” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).

⁷ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

⁸ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

⁹ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

¹⁰ tn The words “Don’t listen to them” have been repeated from v. 9a to pick up the causal connection between v. 9a and v. 10 that is formally introduced by a causal particle in v. 10 in the original text.

¹¹ tn Heb “they are prophesying a lie.”

¹² tn Heb “lies will result in your being taken far…” (לְמַעַן [lÿma’an] + infinitive). This is a rather clear case of the particle לְמַעַן introducing result (contra BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. There is no irony in this statement; it is a bold prediction).

¹³ tn The words “out of your country” are not in the text but are implicit in the meaning of the verb. The words “in exile” are also not in the text but are implicit in the context. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

¹⁴ tn There is some disjunction in the narrative of this chapter. The introduction in v. 1 presents this as a third person narrative. But the rest of the passage reports the narrative in first person. Thus the text reads here “Thus the Lord said to me…” In vv. 12, 16 the narrative picks up in first person report and never indicates that Jeremiah carried out the command in vv. 2-4 that introduces the message which he repeats in summary form himself to Zedekiah. The report is thus an “unedited” first person report. This may create some confusion for some readers, but it is best to leave it in first person here because of the continuation in vv. 12, 16.

¹⁵ sn The yoke is a common biblical symbol of political servitude (see, e.g., Deut 28:48; 1 Kgs 12:4, 9, 10). From the context of 1 Kgs 12 it is clear that it applied to taxation and the provision of conscript labor. In international political contexts it involved the payment of heavy tribute which was often conscripted from the citizens (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 15:19-20; 23:34-35) and the furnishing of military contingents for the sovereign’s armies (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 24:2). Jeremiah’s message here combines both a symbolic action (the wearing of a yoke) and words of explanation as in Jer 19:1-13. (See Isa 20:1-6 for an example outside of Jeremiah.) The casting off of the yoke has been used earlier in Jer 2:20, 5:5 to refer to Israel’s failure to remain spiritually “subject” or faithful to God.

¹⁶ tc Heb “she [‘her sister, unfaithful Judah’ from the preceding verse] saw” with one Hebrew ms, some Greek mss, and the Syriac version. The MT reads “I saw” which may be a case of attraction to the verb at the beginning of the previous verse.

¹⁷ tn Heb “because she committed adultery.” The translation is intended to spell out the significance of the metaphor.

¹⁸ tn The words “Even after her unfaithful sister, Judah, had seen this” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit in the connection and are supplied for clarification.

¹⁹ tn Heb “she played the prostitute there.” This is a metaphor for Israel’s worship; she gave herself to the worship of other gods like a prostitute gives herself to her lovers. There seems no clear way to completely spell out the metaphor in the translation.

²⁰ tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.

²¹ tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”