Look out! Here it comes! (Maybe)

Thus the king would also be careful to heed the warnings that divination offered. But just as a positive omen would not be understood as a guarantee of success, so a negative omen could often be reversed. “The gods send the signs; but what these signs announce is not unavoidable fate. A sign in a Babylonian text is not an absolute cause of a coming event, but a warning. By appropriate actions one can prevent the predicted event from _ happening. The idea of determinism is not inherent in this concept of sign.” [Hunger and Pingree, Astral Science, 5] Consequently, the evidence suggests that the function of divination was to provide divine endorsement or Warning concerning an action that the king had already undertaken or was contemplating in order to assure the king of the continuing support by the deity.—Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 2nd ed., page 245