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25 so the sword can come to Rabbah of the Ammonites or to Judah and its fortress, Jerusalem. 26 For the king of Babylon is standing at the fork of the two roads to read the omens:[a] he shakes out the arrows, inquires of the teraphim, inspects the liver.(A) 27 Into his right hand has fallen the lot marked “Jerusalem”:[b] to order the slaughter, to raise the battle cry, to set the battering rams against the gates, to throw up a ramp, to build siege works.

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Footnotes

  1. 21:26 Three forms of divination are mentioned: arrow divination, consisting in the use of differently marked arrows extracted or shaken from a case at random; the consultation of the teraphim or household idols; and liver divination, scrutiny of the configurations of the livers of newly slaughtered animals, a common form of divination in Mesopotamia.
  2. 21:27–28 A lot marked “Jerusalem” falls out, which marks the guilt of the city’s inhabitants.