Literature: This flood will be no small matter but instead will overflow the land “up to the neck.” The Assyrian army will “fill the breadth of thy land.”
The invocation “O Immanuel,” meaning “God with us,” should be read as parallel to the “God is with us” that closes verse 10 below. Here, however, it also refers to the prophecy of the child in 2 Nephi 17:14 (where the child is named Immanuel). Isaiah refers to this son, without naming him, in verse 18 of this chapter. Uttering the name here applies the entire previous prophecy (“a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14, 2 Ne. 17:14) as pertaining to the current text concerning the ramifications of the Assyrian alliance. Indeed, both prophecies refer to the same events and consequences.
Because the name had meaning, it can be translated as either the personal name or the meaning of the name. The reference to the name Immanuel creates the literary parallelism with the declaration of Yahweh’s presence in verse 10. There the textual “Immanuel” is translated for the meaning, not as the personal name. This parallelism is obscured in English because we do not use verbal phrases as personal names as did Israel, so we are not expecting that a name and a verbal phrase would be parallel. In Hebrew, “Immanuel” is in both places.