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.

And I will get faithful witnesses to attest [to this prophecy] for me, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.”

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,

And it came to pass that your choicest valleys were full of chariots,
And the horsemen took their fixed positions [in an offensive array] at the gate [of Jerusalem].

For the bed is too short to stretch out on,
And the blanket is too narrow to wrap around oneself [and likewise all their preparations are inadequate].

You will no longer see the fierce and insolent people,
A people of unintelligible speech which no one comprehends,
Of a strange and stammering tongue which no one understands.

Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and conquered them.

He says, “It is too trivial a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will also make You a light to the nations
That My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

“For your ruins and desolate places and your land [once the scene] of destruction—
Certainly now [in the coming years] will be too cramped for the inhabitants,
And those who once engulfed you will be far away.

“The children of your bereavement [those born in captivity] will yet say in your ears,
‘The place is too cramped for me’;
Make room for me that I may live here.

Therefore, I will divide and give Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers],
And He shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
Because He [willingly] poured out His life to death,
And was counted among the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore and took away the sin of many,
And interceded [with the Father] for the transgressors.

Both your own wickedness and the wickedness of your fathers,” says the Lord.
“Since they too have made offerings with incense on the mountains
And scorned and taunted Me on the hills,
I therefore will measure [punishment for] their former work [directly] into their arms.”