To offer symbols that are adequate to the horror and massiveness of the experience which evokes numbness and requires denial

 The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.  Notice that I suggest for the prophet in a really numbed situation a quite elemental and modest task.  That task has three parts:

(a) To offer symbols that are adequate to the horror and massiveness of the experience which evokes numbness and requires denial.  The prophet is to provide a way in which the cover-up and the stonewalling can be ended.  This does not mean that symbols are to be invented, for that would be too thin.  Rather it means that the prophet is to reactivate out of our historical past symbols that always have been vehicles for redemptive honesty, for example,  "cross over to Shiloh to see what I did,"  or, finally, take another look at Pharaoh.  The Exodus symbol, above all, is turned to show for all would-be Pharaohs that Exodus is a catastrophic ending of what had seemed forever.

The symbol of Shiloh refers to the traditional home of the Arc of the Covenant, the "home" of God, which was destroyed when the Philistines captured the Arc and destroyed the center of worship for the Children of Israel, the illusion comes from Jeremiah in which a host of sins of the Children of Israel are warned will bring the most dire of consequences even to those who had aspired to the greatest holiness.

 3Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:

Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. 4Trust ye not in lying words, saying: ‘The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, are these.’ 5Nay, but if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbour; 6if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt; 7then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever. 8Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. 9Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye have not known, 10and come and stand before Me in this house, whereupon My name is called, and say: ‘We are delivered’, that ye may do all these abominations? 11Is this house, whereupon My name is called, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, saith the LORD. 12For go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel. 13And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the LORD, and I spoke unto you, speaking betimes and often, but ye heard not, and I called you, but ye answered not; 14therefore will I do unto the house, whereupon My name is called, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. 15And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.  (Jeremiah 7:3-15  JPS 1917)

"Nay, but if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbour; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place," that is a list of things you have to do in order to prevent catastrophe for a society and a nation, the consequence of having blessing removed is a result of doing those, and in the United States we certainly do do them, up to and including the worshiping of false gods,  Donald Trump having replaced the God of Moses and Jesus and Paul for a significant number of those calling themselves and called "Christian leaders" and that's not the Jewish Trump worshipers who are not an insignificant manifestation, though far fewer as a percent than those "christians" who have turned the bronzer covered moon-calf into their idol.  

When you see the catastrophe we have today it is certainly accompanied by what was listed by the prophet.  You'd think the first people to notice that and take it seriously would be the professional clergy who are supposed to be specialists in the Scripture.  And some do but not the ones who get on TV and the radio much.