Isaiah 8

THE COMING ASSYRIAN INVASION

8Then the Lord said to me, “Take a large piece of parchment^A and write on it with an ordinary pen:^Ba Maher-shalal-hash-baz.^{C 2}I have appointed^D trustworthy witnesses—the priest Uriah and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah.”^b

³I was then intimate with the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. The Lord said to me, “Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz, ⁴for before the boy knows how to call ‘Father,’ or ‘Mother,’^c the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be carried off to the king of Assyria.”^d

⁵The Lord spoke to me again:

⁶Because these people rejected

the slowly flowing water of Shiloah

and rejoiced with^E Rezin

and the son of Remaliah,^e

⁷the Lord will certainly bring against them

the mighty rushing water of the Euphrates River—

the king of Assyria and all his glory.

It will overflow its channels

and spill over all its banks.

⁸It will pour into Judah,

flood over it, and sweep through,

reaching up to the neck;^f

and its flooded banks^F

will fill your entire land, Immanuel!^g

⁹Band together,^G peoples, and be broken;

pay attention, all you distant lands;

prepare for war, and be broken;

prepare for war, and be broken.

¹⁰Devise a plan; it will fail.^h

Make a prediction; it will not happen.

For God is with us.^Hi

THE LORD OF ARMIES, THE ONLY REFUGE

¹¹For this is what the Lord said to me with great power, to keep^I me from going the way of this people:^j

¹²Do not call everything a conspiracy

that these people say is a conspiracy.^k

Do not fear what they fear;^l

do not be terrified.

¹³You are to regard only the Lord of Armies as holy.^m

Only he should be feared;ⁿ

only he should be held in awe.

¹⁴He will be a sanctuary;^o

but for the two houses of Israel,

he will be a stone^p to stumble over

and a rock to trip over,^q

and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

¹⁵Many will stumble over these;^r

they will fall and be broken;

they will be snared and captured.

¹⁶Bind up the testimony.^s

Seal up the instruction^t among my disciples.

¹⁷I will wait for the Lord,^u

who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.^v

I will wait for him.

¹⁸Here I am with the children the Lord has given me^w to be signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of Armies who dwells on Mount Zion. ¹⁹When they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the spiritists who chirp and mutter,”^x shouldn’t a people inquire of their God?^A Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?^{y 20}Go to God’s instruction and testimony!^z If they do not speak according to this word, there will be no dawn for them.

²¹They will wander through the land, dejected and hungry. When they are famished, they will become enraged, and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. ²²They will look toward the earth^aa and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.