Ezekiel 12:24

12:24 For there will no longer be any false visions or flattering omens amidst the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 13:23

13:23 Therefore you will no longer see false visions and practice divination. I will rescue my people from your power, and you ¹  will know that I am the Lord.’”

Ezekiel 22:28

22:28 Her prophets coat their messages with whitewash. ²  They see false visions and announce lying omens for them, saying, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.

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,

Isaiah 47:13

47:13 You are tired out from listening to so much advice. ⁷ 

Let them take their stand –

the ones who see omens in the sky,

who gaze at the stars,

who make monthly predictions –

let them rescue you from the disaster that is about to overtake you! ⁸ 

Jeremiah 27:9

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ⁹  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ¹⁰  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ¹¹  subject to the king of Babylon.’

¹ tn The Hebrew verb is feminine plural, indicating that it is the false prophetesses who are addressed here.

² tn Heb “her prophets coat for themselves with whitewash.” The expression may be based on Ezek 13:10-15.

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 tn Heb “you are tired because of the abundance of your advice.”

⁸ tn Heb “let them stand and rescue you – the ones who see omens in the sky, who gaze at the stars, who make known by months – from those things which are coming upon you.”

⁹ 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.

¹⁰ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

¹¹ 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.