Translations
KJVPrimary
King James VersionBehold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.
F.O.G.Secondary
The F.O.GSee, they are like stubble — fire burns them up; they cannot rescue even their own nephesh from the grip of the flame. No glowing coals are these for warming oneself, no fire to sit before.
F.O.G.M.
F.O.G MessageLook — they are like straw consumed by fire. They cannot even save themselves from the grip of the flame. These are not coals to warm yourself by, not a fire you can sit beside.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleSurely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. There will be no coals to warm them or fire to sit beside.
Footnotes
FOG retains *nephesh* — the untranslatable Hebrew whole-self: life, throat, breath, being, appetite — rather than importing the Greek notion of a disembodied soul. They cannot rescue even their own *nephesh*, the most basic locus of existence. The fire imagery is darkly ironic: Babylon is herself a consuming fire in the prophetic tradition (cf. Jer. 51:58), yet the astrologers' blaze saves no one and warms no one — it only destroys. The image of useless coals stands in deliberate contrast to the divine fire of YHWH that both refines and sustains His people (cf. Isa. 43:2). FOG Message renders *nephesh* as 'themselves' for natural English flow.
