The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Prophecy of Isaias
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Chapter 8
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Then the Lord said to me, Take a great scroll, and write on it, in thy human penmanship,✻ the words, Spoiler, haste; there’s plunder afoot.
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I took care to have men of credit for my witnesses, the priest Urias and Zacharias, son of Barachias.
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Afterwards, when the prophetess conceived and bore me a son, the Lord said to me, Call him by this name, Spoiler, haste; there’s plunder afoot.
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This boy will not have learned to use the words Father and Mother, before the king of Assyria comes to carry off the wealth of Damascus, the spoils of Samaria.
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And the Lord went on to say to me,
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This people of mine has cut itself off from the gently-flowing waters of Siloe, to welcome Rasin and the son of Romelia instead;✻
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and now the Lord will bring the waters of Euphrates upon it, in full flood; I mean the king of the Assyrians, in all his greatness. This flood will fill up all the channels of the river, overflow all its banks,
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till it pours over Juda, overwhelming her and reaching up to her very neck. Wings spread out wide, till they cover the whole breadth of thy own land, Emmanuel, the God who is with us!
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Muster, then, you peoples, to your own overthrow; obey the call, distant lands, in vain; summon up your valour, arm yourselves in vain!
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All your scheming baffled, all your boasts belied; God is with us!✻
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Strict warning the Lord has given me, I must not fall in with the fashion of Israel;
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Not for thee and thine to go about crying Treason; this people is for ever crying treason.✻ Not for thee and thine to go in fear, dismayed like these others;
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enthrone the Lord of hosts above all else, him you must fear, of him stand in awe.
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Let the hour of peril consecrate you to him; for the rest, both in Israel and in Juda, it will be a stone to trip men’s feet, a boulder that catches them unawares.✻ A trap, a fine snare, for the citizens of Jerusalem;
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and there are many of them that will stumble, and fall, and bruise themselves, caught in its meshes.
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(Now to guard the prophetic record close, now to seal up these instructions, in the keeping of my disciples!
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What though the Lord hide his face from the men of Israel? To him will I look, and wait patiently for him;
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here stand I, and these children✻ the Lord has given me, a portent, a warning sent to Israel by the Lord of hosts, who dwells on mount Sion.
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Men will bid you consult wizard and diviner, that talk in ghostly voices over their enchantments; Who doubts, they say, God will send his own people answer, an oracle from the dead to the living?
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By these instructions rather abide, this record of prophecy; who follows other inspiration, shall not see the dawn.)
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As for the invader,✻ he shall meet with disaster, and then famine. Famine-stricken, he will turn with curses against his king, his god; first looking upwards
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and then to earth, to find nothing but distress and darkness, ruin and want, with night pressing hard upon him; from his calamity there is no escaping.
