This section corresponds to 7:18-25. Both of them explain that the name to be given a child would have a positive and a negative significance.
8:5-6 Yahweh spoke to Isaiah again (cf. 8:1). King Ahaz was not the only person in Judah who had failed to trust in the Lord but had put his confidence in man. The people of Judah had been guilty of the same folly. They had rejected God's faithful provisions for them, symbolized by the gently flowing Shiloah stream that flowed from the Gihon spring just outside Jerusalem into the city. This water source was unimpressive, but it provided for the people of Jerusalem faithfully. Instead they had rejoiced in the anticipated destruction of the kings of Syria and Ephraim due to Ahaz's alliance with Assyria.
8:7 Judah's sovereign God would indeed sweep these enemies away, as the waters of the Euphrates on which Assyria's capital stood seasonally overflowed and swept away all in its path. But it would be God, not Ahaz, who would be responsible for their defeat. Assyria would not inundate God's people Israel because her gods were stronger than Yahweh, but the sovereign Lord would bring this judgment on them.
"Like Germany in 1939 and 1940, the Assyrians seemed almost superhuman. They could strike anywhere, it seemed, with speed and power."111
"The motif of the two rivers Shiloah (6) and the Euphrates (7) offers a telling contrast between the seeming weakness of faith and the seeming power of the world."112
8:8 The Assyrian tide would not stop at Syria and Israel, however, but would sweep into Judah as well.113But its waters would stop short of completely engulfing Judah; they would reach only to her neck. Israel would drown, but Judah would keep her head above water. Seen from above, the deepening waters of Assyria's army filling every valley and rising higher and higher resembled the wings of a huge, ominous bird of prey that covered the whole land. Isaiah described the whole land as Immanuel's land. Probably this is a double reference to the child predicted to be born (7:14) and to Israel as a whole, the people whose God was with them and would not allow Assyria to devour its prey.114In view of the later fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy in Jesus Christ, we have a reminder that Yahweh continued to be with His people and provided salvation for them ultimately in Christ.
8:9-10 The prophet called on the heathen nations to listen. They would be shattered even though they girded themselves for battle against God's will. They could gird themselves for battle if they would, plan their plans, and propose their proposals, but they would fall because God was with His people.115Ultimately God's people would prevail.
