Then the Lord said to me, “Take for yourself a large tablet [for public display] and write on it in ordinary characters: Belonging to Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

Therefore the Lord raises against Ephraim adversaries from Rezin [king of Aram]
And spurs their enemies on,

Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger [against Israel],
The staff in whose hand is My indignation and fury [against Israel’s disobedience]!

I send Assyria against a godless nation
And commission it against the people of My wrath
To take the spoil and to seize the plunder,
And to trample them down like mud in the streets.

Yet it is not Assyria’s intention [to do My will],
Nor does it plan so in its heart,
But instead it is its purpose to destroy
And to cut off many nations.

For Assyria says, “Are not my princes all kings?

Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images
Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?” [declares Assyria].

For the Assyrian king has said,

“I have done this by the power of my [own] hand and by my wisdom,
For I have understanding and skill.
I have removed the boundaries of the peoples
And have plundered their treasures;
Like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones.

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, will send a wasting disease among the stout warriors of Assyria;
And under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame.

And the Light of Israel will become a fire and His Holy One a flame,
And it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and briars in a single day.

The Lord will consume the glory of Assyria’s forest and of its fruitful garden, both soul and body,
And it will be as when a sick man wastes away.

Therefore, the Lord God of hosts says this, “O My people who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian who strikes you with a rod and lifts up his staff against you, as [the king of] Egypt did.

For yet a very little while and My indignation [against you] will be fulfilled and My anger will be directed toward the destruction of the Assyrian.”

So it will be in that day, that the burden of the Assyrian will be removed from your shoulders and his yoke from your neck. The yoke will be broken because of the fat.

The Assyrian has come against Aiath [in Judah],
He has passed through Migron [with his army];
At Michmash he stored his equipment.

Yet today the Assyrian will halt at Nob [the city of priests];
He shakes his fist at the mountain of the Daughter of Zion, at the hill of Jerusalem.

Listen carefully, the Lord, the God of hosts, will lop off the [beautiful] boughs with terrifying force;
The tall in stature will be cut down
And the lofty will be abased and humiliated.

He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron axe,
And Lebanon (the Assyrian) will fall by the Mighty One.

to break the Assyrian in My land, and on My mountains I will trample him underfoot. Then the Assyrian’s yoke will be removed from them (the people of Judah) and his burden removed from their shoulder.

At evening time, now look, sudden terror!
Before morning the Assyrians are no more.
This is the portion (fate) of those who plunder us,
And the lot of those who pillage us.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria; and the Egyptians will worship and serve [the Lord] with the Assyrians.

In the year that the Tartan [the Assyrian commander in chief] came to Ashdod [in Philistia], when Sargon king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it,

Now look at the land of the Chaldeans (Babylonia)—this is the people which was not; the Assyrians allocated Tyre for desert creatures—they set up their siege towers, they stripped its palaces, they made it a ruin.

Listen carefully, the Lord has a strong and mighty agent [the Assyrian];
Like a tempest of hail, a disastrous storm,
Like a tempest of mighty overflowing waters,
He has cast it down to the earth with His hand.

And the fading flower of its glorious beauty,
Which is at the head of the rich valley,
Will be like the early fig before the summer,
Which one sees,
And as soon as it is in his hand
He [greedily] swallows it [and so will the Assyrians rapidly devour Samaria, Israel’s capital].

For the tyrant will come to an end and the scorner will be finished,
Indeed all who are intent on doing evil will be cut off—

For at the voice of the Lord the Assyrians will be terrified,
When He strikes [them] with the rod.

For Topheth [in Hinnom] has long been ready;
Indeed, it has been prepared for the [Assyrian] king.
He has made it deep and wide,
A pit of fire with plenty of wood;
The breath of the Lord, like a river of brimstone (blazing sulfur), kindles and fans it.

Then the Assyrian will fall by a sword not of man,
And a sword not of man will devour him.
And he will flee from the sword [of God],
And his young men will become forced labor.

But it will hail, when the forest comes down,
And the [capital] city will fall in utter humiliation.

Your spoil [of Israel’s foe] is gathered [by the people of Jerusalem] as the caterpillar gathers;
As locusts swarming so people swarm on it.

Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad [in Aram]? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And when have they rescued Samaria from my hand?

Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph, the recording historian, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn [in grief], and told him the words of the Rabshakeh [the Assyrian commander].

And the angel of the Lord went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when the [surviving] men got up early the next morning, they saw all the dead.

Therefore He poured out on Israel the heat of His anger
And the fierceness of battle;
And engulfed him in fire,
Yet he did not recognize [the lesson of repentance which the Assyrian conquest was intended to teach];
It burned him, but he did not take it to heart.

For the Lord God says this, “My people went down at the first into Egypt to live there; and [many years later Sennacherib] the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.