You are right regarding the NIV (and several othermodern translations as well) that QATAL is occasionally translated with simple future (but often rather reluctantly), something which shows that the translators felt they had no other choice. But why not take a look at the QATALs that the NIV translates by perfect and past tense and ask in each case: Is the event time of this QATAL before, contemporaneous with, or after the deictic center? Are not this QATAL also a prophecy about what would happen with Bebel? And in that case, why use past tense or present perfect? I had these chapters in mind (among others) when I spoke of "back-and-fort" and "hither-and-thither"- renderings of Hebrew verbs. And NIV is not the worst example, so please look at other translations as well.
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