74:9 We do not see any signs of God’s presence; 1
there are no longer any prophets 2
and we have no one to tell us how long this will last. 3
ט (Tet)
2:9 Her city gates have fallen 4 to the ground;
he smashed to bits 5 the bars that lock her gates. 6
Her king and princes were taken into exile; 7
there is no more guidance available. 8
As for her prophets,
they no longer receive 9 a vision from the Lord.
8:11 Be certain of this, 10 the time is 11 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! 12
8:12 People 13 will stagger from sea to sea, 14
and from the north around to the east.
They will wander about looking for a revelation from 15 the Lord,
but they will not find any. 16
3:6 Therefore night will fall, and you will receive no visions; 17
it will grow dark, and you will no longer be able to read the omens. 18
The sun will set on these prophets,
and the daylight will turn to darkness over their heads. 19
1 tn Heb “our signs we do not see.” Because of the reference to a prophet in the next line, it is likely that the “signs” in view here include the evidence of God’s presence as typically revealed through the prophets. These could include miraculous acts performed by the prophets (see, for example, Isa 38:7-8) or object lessons which they acted out (see, for example, Isa 20:3).
2 tn Heb “there is not still a prophet.”
3 tn Heb “and [there is] not with us one who knows how long.”
4 tn Heb “have sunk down.” This expression, “her gates have sunk down into the ground,” is a personification, picturing the city gates descending into the earth, as if going down into the grave or the netherworld. Most English versions render it literally (KJV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, NIV, NJPS); however, a few paraphrases have captured the equivalent sense quite well: “Zion’s gates have fallen facedown on the ground” (CEV) and “the gates are buried in rubble” (TEV).
5 tn Heb “he has destroyed and smashed her bars.” The two verbs אִבַּד וְשִׁבַּר (’ibbad vÿshibbar) form a verbal hendiadys that emphasizes the forcefulness of the destruction of the locking bars on the gates. The first verb functions adverbially and the second retains its full verbal sense: “he has smashed to pieces.” Several English versions render this expression literally and miss the rhetorical point: “he has ruined and broken” (RSV, NRSV), “he has destroyed and broken” (KJV, NASB), “he has broken and destroyed” (NIV). The hendiadys has been correctly noted by others: “smashed to pieces” (TEV, CEV) and “smashed to bits” (NJPS).
6 tn Heb “her bars.” Since the literal “bars” could be misunderstood as referring to saloons, the phrase “the bars that lock her gates” has been used in the present translation.
7 tn Heb “are among the nations.”
8 tn Heb “there is no torah” or “there is no Torah” (אֵין תּוֹרָה, ’en torah). Depending on whether תּוֹרָה (torah, “instruction, law”) is used in parallelism with the preceding or following line, it refers to (1) political guidance that the now-exiled king had formerly provided or (2) prophetic instruction that the now-ineffective prophets had formerly provided (BDB 434 s.v. תּוֹרָה 1.b). It is possible that the three lines are arranged in an ABA chiastic structure, exploiting the semantic ambiguity of the term תּוֹרָה (torah, “instruction”). Possibly it is an oblique reference to the priests’ duties of teaching, thus introducing a third group of the countries leaders. It is possible to hear in this a lament in reference to the destruction of Torah scrolls that may have been at the temple when it was destroyed.
9 tn Heb “they cannot find.”
10 tn Heb “behold” or “look.”
11 tn Heb “the days are.”
12 tn Heb “not a hunger for food or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the
13 tn Heb “they”; the referent (people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 tn That is, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Dead Sea in the east – that is, across the whole land.
15 tn Heb “looking for the word of.”
16 tn It is not clear whether the speaker in this verse is the
17 tn Heb “it will be night for you without a vision.”
18 tn Heb “it will be dark for you without divination.”
19 tn Heb “and the day will be dark over them.”