Tablets and pens

Isaiah 8:1-3 is puzzling. Yahweh tells Isaiah to take a large tablet (Heb. gillayon ) and write “with the stylus of a man” the phrase Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Isaiah doesn’t write anything, but instead “approoached the prophetess” so that she conceives and gives birth to a son (v. 3). The son becomes the placard bearing the name.

Does Isaiah disobey Yahweh? Does he sleep with the prophetess instead of writing a billboard? This makes best sense if verse 1 is taken as a sexual metaphor. The word tablet comes from the verb for “uncover” ( galah ), used of course in sexual contexts for uncovering nakedness. And Isaiah goes to the prophetess equipped with the “stylus of a man,” in context a fairly obvious phallic symbol.

The son he “writes” on the “tablet” of the prophetess is his billboard. Maher-shalal-has-baz is Isaiah’s epistle, his writing.