Discovery BoxIsaiah 47:12-14 
Context47:12 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
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.”
8 tn Heb “hand,” here a metaphor for the strength or power of the flames.
9 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.
