“So I approached the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. Then the LORD said to me, ‘Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz.’ “ (Isaiah 8:3 NASB)
Poor Maher-shalal-hash-baz. He’s the middle child of the three children promised in Isaiah 7-9, and he has the typical complaint of middle children: everyone forgets about him. There’s never been a Christmas concert named after this kid. He has the name no one wants — but it tells a truth that I feel every day.
His unwieldy name is a jumble of two pairs of concepts, hurrying and loot. Peter D. Quinn-Miscall, in Reading Isaiah, translates Maher-shalal-hash-baz as “Speeding-Spoil-Hastening-Prey.” (p.165) A simplified version would be “Hurry! Loot! Hurry! Loot!” His name isn’t a precise concept, it’s a feeling — the feeling you get in the crush of a Black Friday mob. Or when you’re already late and you see the drawbridge start to open. Or when you’ve been in the hospital waiting room for hours with no word. When your mind is screaming hurry but you have to wait.
Being besieged is worse than any of my first-world problems, and the name of Maher-shalal-hash-baz at first seems like salt in the wounds. How can you hurry when you’re in a siege? But God is quoting Judah’s own words, from Isaiah 5:19, when they said “Let God hurry (yə+ma·hêr, word #1); let him hasten (yā+ḥî·šāh, word #3) his work so we may see it.” (NIV) God is listening to their complaints.
Then God unpacks the name, showing Judah must sit with this feeling a little longer, waiting a year or two for this second child to grow. Before the child can day “Dada” or “Mama,” the two attacking armies of Israel and Syria will be looted and plundered by the Assyrian Empire. Two armies, two “hurry” words, and two “plunder” words, equals one long but meaningful name. Two prophecies even, this one parallel to the Immanuel prophecy. We are seeing double, and the plunderers will soon be plundered.
Then Isaiah turns to Judah and makes it clear that the Assyrian Empire won’t stop after plundering their enemies. The child’s name continues to have meaning, and it grows darker. When Ahaz invites the Assyrian Empire to deal with his two enemies, the Empire will eventually turn on him.
By relying on the Empire, God says you have turned from Jerusalem’s own gentle waters, the Gihon Spring and the Siloam Pool it feeds, to the two roaring rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Ahaz is taking a rowboat down the Grand Canyon, or more precisely, he’s putting his son in the boat and saying “Good luck, kid!”
Isaiah 8:6-8 is an old flood sign like you find in small towns, where faded painted lines show how high the waters got in the past, but this flood sign showed the future. The Empire of the great Euphrates will flood the land: “It will overflow all its channels, run over all its banks, and sweep on into Judah, swirling over it, passing through it and reaching up to the neck.” (Isaiah 8:7-8)
This happened. The waters of Empire drowned Syria in 732 BC, then Israel in 722 BC, and flowed up to Jerusalem itself in 701 BC, but stopped when they got neck-high. Hezekiah would be king at that time, and many of the words in the chapters to come seem directed at him – which is all the more appropriate if he is the first “Immanuel.”
Back in 734 BC, Ahaz would have done well to listen to psalms like Psalm 26, which warns of working with “bloody men: In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes.” (v.9-10) Ahaz reacted to the bloody tactics of his two rival kingdoms by calling down the bloodier tactics of the Assyrian Empire. Hezekiah would inherit this situation, and would endure it by saying with the psalmist, “But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity: redeem me, and be merciful unto me.” (v.11) Hezekiah will resist by standing firm, alone.
Isaiah says this redemption won’t come from warriors, but from God’s presence. Isaiah 8:8 and 10 name Immanuel again, saying, because God is with us, this Empire’s plans will not succeed. It will turn back from Jerusalem, defeated.
Both Immanuel and Maher-shalal-hash-baz are living promises, not only that the rivals will be dispersed, but that the Empire will go so far, and no further. Hezekiah will need to remember every word to get through that coming crisis, because it will stretch him and his city, the “city of peace,” to the very limit.
(Image: Flood level sign in Snohomish, WA, taken by BJM on March 25, 2021.)