Isaiah 8
1GOD said to me, “Get yourself a large sheet and write on it in common script ‘For Maher-shalal-hash-baz’;
2and call reliable witnesses, the priest Uriah and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah, to witness for Me.”
3I was intimate with the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son; and GOD said to me, “Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
4For before the boy learns to call ‘Father’ and ‘Mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, and the delights of Rezin and of the son of Remaliah, shall be carried off before the king of Assyria.”
5Again GOD spoke to me, thus:
6“Because that people has spurnedThe gently flowing waters of Siloam”—
7Assuredly,The Sovereign will bring up against themThe mighty, massive waters of the Euphrates,The king of Assyria and all his multitude.It shall rise above all its channels,And flow over all its beds,
8And swirl through Judah like a flash floodReaching up to the neck. But with us is God,Whose wings are spreadAs wide as your land is broad!
9Band together, O peoples—you shall be broken!Listen to this, you remotest parts of the earth:Gird yourselves—you shall be broken;Gird yourselves—you shall be broken!
10Hatch a plot—it shall be foiled;Agree on action—it shall not succeed.For with us is God!
11For this is what GOD said to me, upon taking me by the hand and charging me not to walk in the path of that people:
12“You must not call conspiracy All that that people calls conspiracy, Nor revere what it reveres,Nor hold it in awe.
13None but GOD of HostsShall you account holy;Give reverence to [God] alone,Hold [God] alone in awe.
14[God] shall become a sanctuary,A stone people strike against:A rock people stumble overFor the two Houses of Israel,And a trap and a snare for thoseWho dwell in Jerusalem.
15The masses shall trip over theseAnd shall fall and be injured,Shall be snared and be caught.
16Bind up the message,Seal the instruction with My disciples.”
17So I will wait for GOD, whose face is hidden from the House of Jacob, and in whom I will trust.
18Here stand I and the children GOD has given me as signs and portents in Israel from GOD of Hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
19Now, should people say to you, “Inquire of the ghosts and familiar spirits that chirp and moan; for a people may inquire of its divine beings—of the dead on behalf of the living—
20for instruction and message,” surely, for those who speak thus there shall be no dawn.
21And they shall go about in it wretched and hungry; and when they are hungry, they shall rage and revolt against their king and their divine beings. They may turn their face upward
22or they may look below, but beholdDistress and darkness, with no daybreak; Straitness and gloom, with no dawn.
23For if there were to be any break of day for that [land] that is in straits, only the former [king] would have brought abasement to the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali—while the later one would have brought honor to the Way of the Sea, the other side of the Jordan, and Galilee of the Nations., see Judg. 13.23.