Isaiah 8

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¹Then the Lord said to me, “Take for yourself a large tablet and write on it in ordinary letters: Maher-shalal-hash-baz. ✦ ²And I will take to Myself faithful witnesses for testimony, Uriah 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 Maher-shalal-hash-baz; ✦ ⁴for before the boy knows how to cry out ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoils 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 rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah And rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah; ✦ ⁷Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates River, That is, the king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks. ✦ ⁸“Then it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass through, It will reach as far as the neck; And the spread of its wings will fill the expanse of your land, Immanuel. ✦ ⁹¶“Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; And listen, all remote places of the earth. Get ready, yet be shattered; Get ready, yet be shattered. ✦ ¹⁰“Devise a plan, but it will fail; State a proposal, but it will not stand, For God is with us.” ✦ ¹¹For so the Lord spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, ✦ ¹²“You are not to say, ‘It is a conspiracy!’ Regarding everything that this people call a conspiracy, And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. ✦ ¹³“It is the Lord of armies whom you are to regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, And He shall be your dread. ✦ ¹⁴“Then He will become a sanctuary; But to both houses of Israel, He will be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, And a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ✦ ¹⁵“Many will stumble over them, Then they will fall and be broken; They will be snared and caught.” ✦ ¹⁶Bind up the testimony, seal the Law among my disciples. ✦ ¹⁷And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will wait eagerly for Him. ✦ ¹⁸Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of armies, who dwells on Mount Zion. ✦ ¹⁹When they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should a people not consult their God? Should they consult the dead in behalf of the living? ✦ ²⁰To the Law and to the testimony! If they do not speak in accordance with this word, it is because they have no dawn. ✦ ²¹They will pass through the land dejected and hungry, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will become enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. ✦ ²²Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness. ✦

Tap any verse for its study page. Underlined terms mark a concept, person, or place; ✦ marks verses with cross-references.

Where this chapter connects

Isa 7 ·16 Isa 8 ·8 Isa 28 ·5 Isa 30 ·4 Isa 29 ·4 2 Kgs 16 ·4 Ps 46 ·4 Rom 9 ·3

Christ at the center

Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).

How Isaiah 8 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereVideoBibleProject — video overviews & word studiesBibleProject · 5–10 min · Free · evangelical
Free animated overviews of every book of the Bible, plus themes and Hebrew/Greek word studies — the best visual on-ramp to any book. (Biblical-theology, broadly evangelical, not distinctly Reformed.)
★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Seminary

★ Start hereCommentaryThe Book of Isaiah (NICOT)John N. Oswalt · Paid · evangelical
The standard evangelical commentary on Isaiah — thorough and devotionally warm.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Isaiah videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Isaiah 8YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Isaiah 8David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on IsaiahMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Isaiah 8Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

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