Prophetic perfect tense
The prophetic perfect tense is a literary technique used in the Bible that describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened. History. The category of "prophetic perfect" was already suggested by medieval Hebrew grammarians, such as David Kimhi: "The matter is as clear as though it had already passed," or Isaac ben Yedaiah: "[The rabbis] of blessed memory followed, in these words of theirs, in the paths of the prophets who speak of something which will happen in the future in  the language of the past. Since they saw in prophetic vision that which was to occur in the future, they spoke about it in the past tense and testified firmly that it had happened, to teach the certainty of his [God's] words -- may he be blessed -- and his positive promise that can never change and his beneficent message that will not be altered." (Isaac ben Yedaiah): Gesenius describes it as follows: "The perfect serves to express actions, events, or states, which the speaker wishes to represent from the point of view of completion, whether they belong to a determinate  past time, or extend into the present, or while still future, are pictured as in their completed state." (GKC §106a) "[The perfect can be used to] express facts which are undoubtedly imminent, and, therefore, in the imagination of the speaker, already accomplished (perfectum confidentiae), e.g. Nu 17:27... Gn 30:13, 1 S 6:5 ..., Pr 4:2. Even in interrogative sentences, Gn 18:12, Nu 17:28, 23:10, Ju 9:9, 11, Zc 4:10 (?), Pr 22:20.8 This use of the perfect occurs most frequently in prophetic language (perfectum propheticum). The prophet so transports himself in imagination into the future that he describes the future event as  if it had been already seen or heard by him, e.g. Is 5:13 ...; 19:7, Jb 5:20, 2 Ch 20:37. Not infrequently the imperfect interchanges with such perfects either in the parallel member or further on in the narrative." (GKC §106n) According to Waltke & O'Connor: "Referring to absolute future time, a perfective form may be "persistent" or "accidental". A "persistent (future) perfective" represents a single situation extending from the present into the future... With an "accidental perfective" a speaker vividly and dramatically represents a future situation both as complete and as independent…. This use is especially frequent in prophetic address (hence  it is also called the “prophetic perfect” or “perfective of confidence”)." Klein has attempted to identify all established instances of the prophetic perfect. Notarius, siding with Rogland, argues that the "prophetic perfect" is "a metaphorical use of the past tense in the retrospective future-oriented report."