Isaiah 8:18

Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me ¹  are reminders and object lessons ²  in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.

1Ch 23:25; Ps 9:11; Ps 22:30; Ps 71:7; Isa 7:3,16; Isa 8:3; Isa 12:6; Isa 14:32; Isa 24:23; Isa 53:10; Eze 14:8; Zec 3:8; Zec 8:3; Lu 2:34; 1Co 4:9-13; Heb 2:13,14; Heb 10:33; Heb 12:22

¹ sn This refers to Shear-jashub (7:3) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:1, 3).

² tn 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.