47:12 Persist 1 in trusting 2 your amulets
and your many incantations,
which you have faithfully recited 3 since your youth!
Maybe you will be successful 4 –
maybe you will scare away disaster. 5
47:13 You are tired out from listening to so much advice. 6
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! 7
47:14 Look, they are like straw,
which the fire burns up;
they cannot rescue themselves
from the heat 8 of the flames.
There are no coals to warm them,
no firelight to enjoy. 9
47:15 They will disappoint you, 10
those you have so faithfully dealt with since your youth. 11
Each strays off in his own direction, 12
leaving no one to rescue you.”
1 tn Heb “stand” (so KJV, ASV); NASB, NRSV “Stand fast.”
2 tn The word “trusting” is supplied in the translation for clarification. See v. 9.
3 tn Heb “in that which you have toiled.”
4 tn Heb “maybe you will be able to profit.”
5 tn Heb “maybe you will cause to tremble.” The object “disaster” is supplied in the translation for clarification. See the note at v. 9.
6 tn Heb “you are tired because of the abundance of your advice.”
7 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.”
11 tn Heb “hand,” here a metaphor for the strength or power of the flames.
12 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “there is no coal [for?] their food, light to sit before it.” Some emend לַחְמָם (lakhmam, “their food”) to לְחֻמָּם (lÿkhummam, “to warm them”; see HALOT 328 s.v. חמם). This statement may allude to Isa 44:16, where idolaters are depicted warming themselves over a fire made from wood, part of which was used to form idols. The fire of divine judgment will be no such campfire; its flames will devour and destroy.
16 tn Heb “So they will be to you”; NIV “That is all they can do for you.”
17 tn Heb “that for which you toiled, your traders from your youth.” The omen readers and star gazers are likened to merchants with whom Babylon has had an ongoing economic relationship.
18 tn Heb “each to his own side, they err.”