Isaiah 8:17-18
17 I will wait patiently for the Lord,who has rejected the family of Jacob; ▼
▼ Heb “who hides his face from the house of Jacob.”
I will wait for him.
18 Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me ▼ are reminders and object lessons ▼
▼ Or “signs and portents” (NAB, NRSV). The names of all three individuals has symbolic value. Isaiah’s name (which meant “the Lord delivers”) was a reminder that the Lord was the nation’s only source of protection; Shear-jashub’s name was meant, at least originally, to encourage Ahaz (see the note at 7:3), and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’s name was a guarantee that God would defeat Israel and Syria (see the note at 8:4). The word מוֹפֶת (mofet, “portent”) can often refer to some miraculous event, but in 20:3 it is used, along with its synonym אוֹת (’ot, “sign”) of Isaiah’s walking around half-naked as an object lesson of what would soon happen to the Egyptians.
in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.
Copyright information for
NETfull