8 Again the Lord sent me a message: “Make a large signboard and write on it the birth announcement of the son I am going to give you. Use capital letters! His name will be Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means ‘Your enemies will soon be destroyed.’”^{[a] 2} I asked Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, both known as honest men, to watch me as I wrote so they could testify that I had written it before the child was even on the way.^{[b] 3} Then I had sexual intercourse with my wife and she conceived and bore me a son. And the Lord said, “Call him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. ⁴ This name prophesies that within a couple of years, before this child is even old enough to say ‘Daddy’ or ‘Mommy,’ the king of Assyria will invade both Damascus and Samaria and carry away their riches.”

⁵ Then the Lord spoke to me again and said:

⁶ “Since the people of Jerusalem are planning to refuse my gentle care^[c] and are enthusiastic about asking King Rezin and King Pekah to come and aid them, ^7-8 therefore I will overwhelm my people with Euphrates’ mighty flood; the king of Assyria and all his mighty armies will rage against them. This flood will overflow all its channels and sweep into your land of Judah, O Immanuel, submerging it from end to end.”

^9-10 Do your worst, O Syria and Israel,^[d] our enemies, but you will not succeed—you will be shattered. Listen to me, all you enemies of ours: Prepare for war against us—and perish! Yes! Perish! Call your councils of war, develop your strategies, prepare your plans of attacking us, and perish! For God is with us.

¹¹ The Lord has said in strongest terms: Do not under any circumstances go along with the plans of Judah to surrender to Syria and Israel. ¹² Don’t let people call you a traitor for staying true to God. Don’t you panic as so many of your neighbors are doing when they think of Syria and Israel attacking you. ¹³ Don’t fear anything except the Lord of the armies of heaven! If you fear him, you need fear nothing else. ^14-15 He will be your safety; but Israel and Judah have refused his care and thereby stumbled against the Rock of their salvation and lie fallen and crushed beneath it: God’s presence among them has endangered them! ¹⁶ Write down all these things I am going to do, says the Lord, and seal them up for the future. Entrust them to some godly man to pass on down to godly men of future generations.

¹⁷ I will wait for the Lord to help us, though he is hiding now. My only hope is in him. ¹⁸ I and the children God has given me have symbolic names that reveal the plans of the Lord of heaven’s armies for his people: Isaiah means “Jehovah will save (his people),” Shear-jashub means “A remnant shall return,” and Maher-shalal-hash-baz means “Your enemies will soon be destroyed.” ¹⁹ So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting witches and mediums? Don’t listen to their whisperings and mutterings. Can the living find out the future from the dead? Why not ask your God?

²⁰ “Check these witches’ words against the Word of God!” he says. “If their messages are different than mine, it is because I have not sent them; for they have no light or truth in them. ²¹ My people will be led away captive, stumbling, weary and hungry. And because they are hungry, they will rave and shake their fists at heaven and curse their King and their God. ²² Wherever they look there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. And they will be thrust out into the darkness.”