Isaiah 8

Chapter 8

Damascus and Samaria Fall

¹Then the Lord said to me, “Take for yourself a large tablet and ^awrite on it ¹in ordinary letters: ^2bSwift is the booty, speedy is the prey.

²“And ¹I will take to Myself faithful witnesses for testimony, ^aUriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.”

³So I approached the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. Then the Lord said to me, “Name him ^1aMaher-shalal-hash-baz;

⁴for ^abefore the boy knows how to cry out ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of ^bDamascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.”

⁵Again the Lord spoke to me further, saying,

⁶“Inasmuch as these people have ^arejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah

And rejoice in ^bRezin and the son of Remaliah;

⁷“Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the ^astrong and abundant waters of the ^1bEuphrates,

Even the ^cking of Assyria and all his glory;

And it will ^drise up over all its channels and go over all its banks.

⁸“Then ^ait will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass through,

It will ^breach even to the neck;

And the spread of its wings will ¹fill the breadth of ²your land, O ^cImmanuel.

A Believing Remnant

⁹“^aBe broken, O peoples, and be ^1bshattered;

And give ear, all remote places of the earth.

Gird yourselves, yet be shattered;

Gird yourselves, yet be shattered.

¹⁰“^aDevise a plan, but it will be thwarted;

State a ¹proposal, but ^bit will not stand,

For ^2cGod is with us.”

¹¹For thus the Lord spoke to me ¹with ^amighty power and instructed me ^bnot to walk in the way of this people, saying,

¹²“You are not to say, ‘It is a ^aconspiracy!’

In regard to all that this people call a conspiracy,

And ^byou are not to fear ¹what they fear or be in dread of it.

¹³“It is the ^aLord of hosts ^bwhom you should regard as holy.

And He shall be your fear,

And He shall be your dread.

¹⁴“Then He shall become a ^asanctuary;

But to both the houses of Israel, a ^bstone to strike and a rock to stumble over,

And a snare and a ^ctrap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

¹⁵“Many ^awill stumble over them,

Then they will fall and be broken;

They will even be snared and caught.”

^16aBind up the testimony, ^bseal the ¹law among ^cmy disciples.

¹⁷And I will ^await for the Lord ^bwho is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him.

^18aBehold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for ^bsigns and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who ^cdwells on Mount Zion.

¹⁹When they say to you, “^aConsult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should not a people ^bconsult their God? Should they ^cconsult the dead on behalf of the living?

²⁰To the ^1alaw and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because ^bthey have no dawn.

²¹They will pass through ¹the land ^ahard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse ²their king and their God as they face upward.

²²Then they will ^alook to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be ^bdriven away into darkness.