Text -- Isaiah 7:16-25 (NET)

7:16 Here is why this will be so: Before the child knows how to reject evil and choose what is right, the land whose two kings you fear will be desolate. 7:17 The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s family a time unlike any since Ephraim departed from Judah– the king of Assyria!” 7:18 At that time the Lord will whistle for flies from the distant streams of Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria. 7:19 All of them will come and make their home in the ravines between the cliffs, and in the crevices of the cliffs, in all the thorn bushes, and in all the watering holes. 7:20 At that time the sovereign master will use a razor hired from the banks of the Euphrates River, the king of Assyria, to shave the head and the pubic hair; it will also shave off the beard. 7:21 At that time a man will keep alive a young cow from the herd and a couple of goats. 7:22 From the abundance of milk they produce, he will have sour milk for his meals. Indeed, everyone left in the heart of the land will eat sour milk and honey. 7:23 At that time every place where there had been a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels will be overrun with thorns and briers. 7:24 With bow and arrow men will hunt there, for the whole land will be covered with thorns and briers. 7:25 They will stay away from all the hills that were cultivated, for fear of the thorns and briers. Cattle will graze there and sheep will trample on them.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Isa 7:16

Not only this land shall be preserved until the virgin's son shall be born, but thine enemies land shall be sorely scourged, and these two kings destroyed within a very little time.

Wesley: Isa 7:16

Shear - Jashub, whom in all probability the prophet pointed at, and who was brought hither by God's special command, Isa 7:3. for this very use.

Wesley: Isa 7:16

The lands of Syria and Israel.

Wesley: Isa 7:16

So far shall Pekah and Rezin be from conquering thy land, that they shall lose their own lands, and their lives too; which they did within two years after this time, being both slain by the king of Assyria.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

But altho' God will deliver you at this time, yet he will requite all your wickedness.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

For part of this Assyrian storm fell in Ahaz's reign.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

Upon thy sons and successors, the kings of Judah.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

Calamities.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

When ten tribes revolted from thy father's house.

Wesley: Isa 7:17

Who may well be called their plague or calamity, as he is called the rod of God's anger, Isa 10:5.

Wesley: Isa 7:18

The flies. So he calls these enemies, to imply their great numbers.

Wesley: Isa 7:18

In their extremity, where they go out into the sea.

Wesley: Isa 7:18

Of the river Nile, which may be called rivers, either for its greatness, or because towards the end of it, it is divided into seven streams. When the Chaldeans had in good measure subdued the Egyptians, it is probable great numbers of the Egyptian soldiers listed themselves in the Chaldean army, and with them invaded the land of Judah.

Wesley: Isa 7:18

The Assyrian army, compared to bees, as for their numerous forces and orderly march, so for their fierce attempts and mischievous effects.

Wesley: Isa 7:18

In the empire of Assyria, or Babylon; for these two were united into one empire, and therefore in scripture are promiscuously called sometimes by one title, and sometimes by the other.

Wesley: Isa 7:19

Such as they found fruitful, but made desolate.

Wesley: Isa 7:19

To which possibly the Israelites fled for refuge.

Wesley: Isa 7:19

Which he mentions because flies and bees use frequently to rest there; and to intimate, that no place should escape their fury.

Wesley: Isa 7:20

Utterly spoil, as shaving takes away the hair.

Wesley: Isa 7:20

By Ahaz, who did hire them, 2Ki 16:7-8. And so the prophet notes the just judgment of God, in scourging them with a rod of their own making.

Wesley: Isa 7:20

By the successive kings of the Assyrian empire, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and especially by Nebuchadnezzar.

Wesley: Isa 7:20

By these metaphorical expressions he signifies the total destruction of their state, from head to foot, from the highest to the lowest.

Wesley: Isa 7:21

They who formerly used to keep great herds of cattle, and many flocks of sheep, shall esteem it a happiness if they can keep but one cow and two sheep.

Wesley: Isa 7:22

Because they shall have large pastures, by reason of the great scarcity of cattle.

Wesley: Isa 7:22

Which the poorer sort had formerly used to sell, to procure them cheaper food for themselves: but now the land should be so destitute of people, that there were none to whom they could sell them.

Wesley: Isa 7:23

Each of the thousand vineyards might have been sold or let for a thousand shekels, which was the yearly rent of some excellent vineyards.

Wesley: Isa 7:24

Either to hunt, or to defend themselves from wild beasts, which commonly abide in desolate grounds.

Wesley: Isa 7:25

That used to be digged and dressed for the planting of vines, or other choice fruit - trees.

Wesley: Isa 7:25

That they might be freed from briars and thorns.

Wesley: Isa 7:25

All sorts of cattle may enter, and feed there, the fences being broken down, and the owners slain, or carried into captivity.

JFB: Isa 7:16

The deliverance implied in the name "Immanuel," and the cessation of distress as to food (Isa 7:14-15), shall last only till the child grows to know good and evil;

JFB: Isa 7:16

Rather, desolate shall be the land, before whose two kings thou art alarmed [HENGSTENBERG and GESENIUS].

JFB: Isa 7:16

Namely, Syria and Samaria regarded as one (2Ki 16:9; 2Ki 15:30), just two years after this prophecy, as it foretells. HORSLEY takes it, "The land (Judah and Samaria) of (the former of) which thou art the plague (literally, 'thorn') shall be forsaken," &c.; a prediction thus, that Judah and Israel (appropriately regarded as one "land") should cease to be kingdoms (Luk 2:1; Gen 49:10) before Immanuel came.

Though temporary deliverance (Isa 7:16; Isa 8:4) was to be given then, and final deliverance through Messiah, sore punishment shall follow the former. After subduing Syria and Israel, the Assyrians shall encounter Egypt (2Ki 23:29), and Judah shall be the battlefield of both (Isa 7:18), and be made tributary to that very Assyria (2Ch 28:20; 2Ki 16:7-8) now about to be called in as an ally (Isa 39:1-6). Egypt, too, should prove a fatal ally (Isa 36:6; Isa 31:1, &c.).

JFB: Isa 7:18

Whistle, to bring bees to settle (see on Isa 5:26).

JFB: Isa 7:18

Found in numbers about the arms of the Nile and the canals from it (Isa 19:5-7; Isa 23:3), here called "rivers." Hence arose the plague of flies (Exo 8:21). Figurative, for numerous and troublesome foes from the remotest parts of Egypt, for example, Pharaoh-nechoh.

JFB: Isa 7:18

(Deu 1:44; Psa 118:12). As numerous in Assyria as the fly in marshy Egypt. Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled this prediction.

JFB: Isa 7:19

Image of flies and bees kept up. The enemy shall overspread the land everywhere, even in "desolate valleys."

JFB: Isa 7:19

Wild, contrasted with "bushes," which were valued and objects of care (see Margin).

JFB: Isa 7:20

The Assyrians are to be God's instrument of devastating Judea, just as a razor sweeps away all hair before it (Isa 10:5; Eze 29:19-20).

JFB: Isa 7:20

Alluding to Ahaz' hiring (2Ki 16:7-8) Tiglath-pileser against Syria and Israel; namely,

JFB: Isa 7:20

Namely, the Euphrates; the eastern boundary of Jewish geographical knowledge (Psa 72:8); the river which Abram crossed; the Nile also may be included (Isa 7:18) [G. V. SMITH]. GESENIUS translates, "With a razor hired in the parts beyond the river."

JFB: Isa 7:20

The whole body, including the most honored parts. To cut the "beard" is the greatest indignity to an Easterner (Isa 50:6; 2Sa 10:4-5; Eze 5:1).

JFB: Isa 7:21

That is, own.

JFB: Isa 7:21

A heifer giving milk. Agriculture shall cease, and the land become one great pasturage.

JFB: Isa 7:22

By reason of the wide range of land lying desolate over which the cows and sheep (including goats) may range.

JFB: Isa 7:22

Thick milk, or cream.

JFB: Isa 7:22

(See on Isa 7:15). Food of spontaneous growth will be the resource of the few inhabitants left. Honey shall be abundant as the bees will find the wild flowers abounding everywhere.

JFB: Isa 7:23

Where up to that time there was so valuable a vineyard as to have in it a 1000 vines, worth a silverling (shekel, about 2s. 3d.; a large price) each, there shall be only briers (Son 8:11). Vineyards are estimated by the number of the vines, and the goodness of the kind of vine. Judea admits of a high state of cultivation, and requires it, in order to be productive; its present barrenness is due to neglect.

JFB: Isa 7:24

It shall become a vast hunting ground, abounding in wild beasts (compare Jer 49:19).

JFB: Isa 7:25

Rather, "were once."

JFB: Isa 7:25

In order to plant and rear vines (Isa 5:6).

JFB: Isa 7:25

That is, none shall come who fear thorns, seeing that thorns shall abound on all sides [MAURER]. Otherwise, "Thou shalt not come for fear of thorns" [GESENIUS]. Only cattle shall be able to penetrate the briery ground.

JFB: Isa 7:25

Sheep and goats.

The first seven verses of the ninth chapter belong to this section. The eighth chapter continues the subject of the seventh chapter, but at a later period (compare Isa 8:4 with Isa 7:16); implying that the interval till the accomplishment is shorter now than then. The tone of Isa 8:17, Isa 8:21-22, expresses calamity more immediate and afflictive than Isa 7:4, Isa 7:15, Isa 7:22.

Clarke: Isa 7:18

Hiss for the fly "Hist the fly"- See note on Isa 5:26

Egypt, and - Assyria - Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Pharaoh-necho, and Nebuchadnezzar, who one after another desolated Judea.

Clarke: Isa 7:19

Holes of the rocks "Caverns"- So the Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate, whence Houbigant supposes the true reading to be הנחללים hannachalolim . One of my oldest MSS. reads הנחלולים hannochalolim .

Clarke: Isa 7:20

The river - That is, the Euphrates: הנהר hanahar . So read the Septuagint and two MSS

Shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired "Jehovah shall shave by the hired razor"- To shave with the hired razor the head, the feet, and the beard, is an expression highly parabolical, to denote the utter devastation of the country from one end to the other; and the plundering of the people, from the highest to the lowest, by the Assyrians, whom God employed as his instrument to punish the Jews. Ahaz himself, in the first place, hired the king of Assyria to come to help him against the Syrians, by a present made to him of all the treasures of the temple, as well as his own. And God himself considered the great nations, whom he thus employed as his mercenaries; and paid them their wages. Thus he paid Nebuchadnezzar for his services against Tyre, by the conquest of Egypt, Eze 29:18-20. The hairs of the head are those of the highest order in the state; those of the feet, or the lower parts, are the common people; the beard is the king, the high priest, the very supreme in dignity and majesty. The Eastern people have always held the beard in the highest veneration, and have been extremely jealous of its honor. To pluck a man’ s beard is an instance of the greatest indignity that can be offered. See Isa 50:6. The king of the Ammonites, to show the utmost contempt of David, "cut off half the beards of his servants, and the men were greatly ashamed; and David bade them tarry at Jericho till their beards were grown,"2Sa 10:4, 2Sa 10:6. Niebuhr, Arabie, p. 275, gives a modern instance of the very same kind of insult. "The Turks,"says Thevenot, "greatly esteem a man who has a fine beard; it is a very great affront to take a man by his beard, unless it be to kiss it; they swear by the beard."Voyages, i., p. 57. D’ Arvieux gives a remarkable instance of an Arab, who, having received a wound in his jaw, chose to hazard his life, rather than suffer his surgeon to take off his beard. Memoires, tom. iii., p. 214. See also Niebuhr, Arabie, p. 61

The remaining verses of this chapter, Isa 7:21-25, contain an elegant and very expressive description of a country depopulated, and left to run wild, from its adjuncts and circumstances: the vineyards and cornfields, before well cultivated, now overrun with briers and thorns; much grass, so that the few cattle that are left, a young cow and two sheep, have their full range, and abundant pasture, so as to yield milk in plenty to the scanty family of the owner; the thinly scattered people living, not on corn, wine, and oil, the produce of cultivation; but on milk and honey, the gifts of nature; and the whole land given up to the wild beasts, so that the miserable inhabitants are forced to go out armed with bows and arrows, either to defend themselves against the wild beasts, or to supply themselves with necessary food by hunting

A Very judicious friend has sent me the following observations on the preceding prophecy, which I think worthy of being laid before the reader; though they are in some respects different from my own view of the subject

"To establish the primary and literal meaning of a passage of Scripture is evidently laying the true foundation for any subsequent views or improvements from it

"The kingdom of Judah, under the government of Ahaz, was reduced very low. Pekah, king of Israel, had slain in Judea one hundred and twenty thousand in one day; and carried away captive two hundred thousand including women and children, with much spoil. To add to this distress, Rezin, king of Syria, being confederate with Pekah, had taken Elath, a fortified city of Judah, and carried the inhabitants to Damascus. I think it may also be gathered from the sixth verse of chap. 8, that the kings of Syria and Israel had a considerable party in the land of Judea, who, regardless of the Divine appointment and promises, were disposed to favor the elevation of Tabeal, a stranger, to the throne of David

"In this critical conjuncture of affairs, Isaiah was sent with a message of mercy, and a promise of deliverance, to Ahaz. He was commanded to take with him Shearjashub, his son whose name contained a promise respecting the captives lately made by Pekah, whose return from Samaria, effected by the expostulation of the prophet Oded and the concurrence of the princes of Ephraim, was now promised as a pledge of the Divine interposition offered to Ahaz in favor of the house of David. And as a farther token of this preservation, notwithstanding the incredulity of Ahaz, Isaiah was directed to predict the birth of another son which should be born to him within the space of a year, and to be named Emmanuel, signifying thereby the protection of God to the land of Judah and family of David at this present conjuncture, with reference to the promise of the Messiah who was to spring from that family, and be born in that land. Compare Isa 8:8. Hence Isaiah testifies, Isa 8:18 : ‘ Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for types in Israel.’ Compare Zec 3:8 : ‘ Thy companions are men of sign and type:’ see Dr. Lowth on this verse. The message of Divine displeasure against Israel is in like manner expressed by the names the prophet Hosea was directed to give his children; see Hos 1:1-11 and 2

"Concerning this child, who was to be named Immanuel, the prophet was commissioned to declare, that notwithstanding the present scarcity prevailing in the land from its being harassed by war, yet within the space of time wherein this child should be of age to discern good and evil, both these hostile kings, viz., of Israel and Syria, should be cut off; and the country enjoy such plenty, that butter and honey, food accounted of peculiar delicacy, should be a common repast. See Harmer’ s Observations, p. 299

"To this it may be objected that Isaiah’ s son was not named Immanuel, but Maher-shalal-hash-baz; the signification of which bore a threatening aspect, instead of a consolatory one. To this I think a satisfactory answer may be given. Ahaz, by his unbelief and disregard of the message of mercy sent to him from God, (for instead of depending upon it he sent and made a treaty with the king of Assyria), drew upon himself the Divine displeasure, which was expressed by the change of the child’ s name, and the declaration that though Damascus and Samaria should, according to the former prediction, fall before the king of Assyria, yet that this very power, i.e., Assyria, in whom Ahaz trusted for deliverance, (see 2Ki 16:7, etc.), should afterwards come against Judah, and ‘ fill the breadth of the land,’ which was accomplished in the following reign, when Jerusalem was so endangered as to be delivered only by miracle. The sixth and seventh verses of chap. 8 indicate, I think, as I before observed, that the kings of Syria and Israel had many adherents in Judah, who are said to refuse the peaceful waters of Shiloah or Siloam, him that is to be sent, who ought to have been their confidence, typified by the fountain at the foot of Mount Zion, whose stream watered the city of Jerusalem; and therefore, since the splendor of victory, rather than the blessings of peace, was the object of their admiration, compared to a swelling river which overflowed its banks, God threatens to chastise them by the victorious armies of Ashur. The prophet at the same time addresses words of consolation to such of the people who yet feared and trusted in Jehovah, whom he instructs and comforts with the assurance (Isa 8:10) that they shall prove the fulfillment of the promise contained in the name Immanuel

"But it may still be objected, that according to this interpretation of the fourteenth verse of chap. 7 nothing miraculous occurs, which is readily admitted; but the objection rests upon the supposition that something miraculous was intended; whereas the word אות oth , ‘ sign,’ does by no means generally imply a miracle, but most commonly an emblematic representation, (see Eze 4:3-12; 11; Eze 20:20; Zec 6:14), either by actions or names, of some future event either promised or threatened. Exo 3:12; 1Sa 2:34; 2Ki 19:29; Jer 44:29, Jer 44:30, are all examples of a future event given as a sign or token of something else which is also future. The birth of Isaiah’ s son was indeed typical of him whose name he was, at first, appointed to bear, viz., Immanuel, even as Oshea the son of Nun had his name changed to Jehoshua, the same with Jesus, of whom he was an eminent type. Hence the prophet, in the ninth chapter, breaks forth into a strain of exultation: ‘ To us a child is born;’ after which follow denunciations against Rezin and the kingdom of Israel, which are succeeded by declarations, that when Assyria had completed the appointed chastisement upon Judah and Jerusalem, that empire should be destroyed. The whole of the tenth chapter is a very remarkable prophecy, and was probably delivered about the time of Sennacherib’ s invasion

"But still it will be urged, that St. Matthew, when relating the miraculous conception of our Lord, says, ‘ Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,’ etc. To this it may readily be answered, that what was spoken by the prophet was indeed now fulfilled in a higher, more important, and also in a more literal sense, than the primary fulfillment could afford, which derived all its value from its connection with this event, to which it ultimately referred

"In like manner the prophecy of Isaiah, contained in the second chapter, received a complete fulfillment in our Savior’ s honoring Capernaum with his residence, and preaching throughout Galilee; though there appears reason to interpret the passage as having a primary respect to the reformation wrought by Hezekiah and which, at the eve of the dissolution of the kingdom of Israel by the captivity of the ten tribes, extended to the tribes of Asher and Zebulun, and many of the inhabitants of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were hereby stirred up to destroy idolatry in their country. See 2Ch 31:1. And without doubt the great deliverance wrought afterwards for Judah by the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib’ s army, and the recovery of Hezekiah in so critical a conjuncture from a sickness which had been declared to be unto death, contributed not a little to revive the fear of God in that part of Israel which, through their defection from the house of David, had grievously departed from the temple and worship of the true God; and as Galilee lay contiguous to countries inhabited by Gentiles, they had probably sunk deeper into idolatry than the southern part of Israel

"In several passages of St. Matthew’ s Gospel, our translation conveys the idea of things being done in order to fulfill certain prophecies; but I apprehend that if the words ἱνα και ὁπως were rendered as simply denoting the event, so that and thus was fulfilled, the sense would be much clearer. For it is obvious that our Lord did not speak in parables or ride into Jerusalem previously to his last passover, simply for the purpose of fulfilling the predictions recorded, but also from other motives; and in chap. 2 the evangelist only remarks that the circumstance of our Lord’ s return from Egypt corresponded with the prophet Hosea’ s relation of that part of the history of the Israelites. So in the twenty-third verse Joseph dwelt at Nazareth because he was directed so to do by God himself; and the sacred historian, having respect to the effect afterwards produced, (see Joh 7:41, Joh 7:42, Joh 7:52), remarks that this abode in Nazareth was a means of fulfilling those predictions of the prophets which indicate the contempt and neglect with which by many the Messiah should be treated. Galilee was considered by the inhabitants of Judea as a degraded place, chiefly from its vicinity to the Gentiles; and Nazareth seems to have been proverbially contemptible; and from the account given of the spirit and conduct of the inhabitants by the evangelists, not without reason."- E. M. B

To my correspondent, as well as to many learned men, there appears some difficulty in the text; but I really think this is quite done away by that mode of interpretation which I have already adopted; and as far as the miraculous conception is concerned, the whole is set in the clearest and strongest light, and the objections and cavils of the Jeers entirely destroyed.

Calvin: Isa 7:16

16.Before the child shall know Many have been led into a mistake by connecting this verse with the preceding one, as if it had been the same child that was mentioned. They suppose that it assigns the reason, and that the particle כי ( ki) means for ¹¹⁰ But if we carefully examine the Prophet’s meaning, it will quickly be apparent that he leaves the general doctrine, to which he had made a short digression, and returns to his immediate subject. After having founded the hope of the preservation of the city on the promised Mediator, he now shows in what way it will be preserved.

The child I interpret this word as referring, not to Christ, but to all children in general. Here I differ from all the commentators; for they think that the demonstrative ה points out a particular child. But I view הנער , ( hannagnar,) so that ה is indeed added for the purpose of making it more definite, but is intended to point out the age, and not any particular child; as when we say, The child, ¹¹¹ and add the article The ¹¹² for the purpose of giving greater definiteness. This is very customary in Scripture. If he had pointed out a particular child, he would have added הזה , ( hazzeh,) as is frequently done in other passages. It is not probable that this promise of the overturn of the kingdoms of Syria and Samaria, which immediately followed, would be deferred for five hundred years, that is, till the coming of Christ; and, indeed, it would have been altogether absurd. The meaning therefore is, “Before the children, who shall be born hereafter, can distinguish between good and evil, the land which thou hatest shall be forsaken.”

The land By the land I understand Israel and Syria; for though they were two, yet on account of the league which had been formed between the two kings, they are accounted one. Some understand by it Judea; but that cannot agree on account of the plural noun which follows, her kings. That these things happened as they are written may be easily inferred from the sacred history; for when Ahaz called the Assyrians to aid him, Rezin was slain by them. (2Kg 16:9.) Not long afterwards, Pekah, king of Israel, died, in the twelfth year of King Ahaz, and was succeeded by Hoshea, the son of Elah. (2Kg 15:30.) Thus, before the children who should afterwards be born were grown up, both countries would be deprived of their kings; for before that time both Rezin and Pekah were removed out of the land of the living. Now the discourse is addressed to Ahaz, and God promises to him, by way of consolation, that he will inflict punishment on the enemies of Ahaz, but for no other purpose than to render him more inexcusable.

Which thou hatest As to the word hatest, Syria and the land of Israel are said to be hated or abhorred by King Ahaz, because from that quarter he was attacked by invading armies. He therefore promises that those kings will soon perish. Some render מפני , ( mippenei,) on account of; ¹¹³ and I admit that this word is generally used in this sense. But I adopt here a more natural rendering, as if he had said, It shall be forsaken from the face or from the presence of the two kings, and shall be left by them, so that they shall no more be seen. And by these words it is sufficiently evident that this must be understood as referring to both kingdoms.

Calvin: Isa 7:17

17.The Lord shall bring upon thee. Here the Prophet, on the other hand, threatens the wicked hypocrite, who pretended that he was unwilling to tempt God, and yet called for those whom the Lord had forbidden him to call to his aid. (Exo 23:32.) That he might not indulge in undue exultation and insolence on account of the former promise, he likewise threatens his destruction, and declares that what he hopes to be his preservation, that is, the aid of the Assyrians, will be utterly destructive to him. (2Kg 16:7; 2Ch 28:16.) As if he had said, “Thou promisest everything to thyself from the king of Assyria, and thinkest that he will be faithful to thee, because thou hast entered into a league and covenant with him, which God had forbidden; but thou shalt quickly understand of what advantage it will be to thee to have tempted God. Thou mightest have remained at home and at ease, and mightest have received the assistance of God; but thou choosest rather to call in the Assyrians. Thou shalt find them to be worse than thine own enemies;”

This discourse, therefore, agrees with what goes before; for he presses more closely the treachery and ingratitude of the king, who had rejected both the word of God and the sign, and had rendered himself unworthy of every promise. And as it is customary with hypocrites, when they have escaped from any danger and fear, immediately to return to their natural disposition, he affirms that nothing shall protect the Jews from being likewise involved in just punishments. He expressly declares that the family of David, which might have claimed exemption on the ground of its peculiar privilege, will be exposed to the same kind of calamities; for God regulates his judgments in such a manner, that while he spares his Church and provides for her permanent existence, he does not permit the wicked, who are mingled with the good, to escape unpunished.

From the day that Ephraim departed from Judah In this manner does Scripture speak when it describes any serious calamity; for the Jews could not have received a severer chastisement than when, by the withdrawing of the ten tribes, (1Kg 12:16,) not only was the kingdom wretchedly divided, but the body of the nation was rent and torn. The revolt of Ephraim from Judah was, therefore, an indication of the worst kind of calamity; for the resources of the kingdom of Judah being more seriously affected by that division than it could have been by any defeat by a foreign enemy, he says that since that time the Jews had not sustained a greater calamity.

Hence, as I have already said, we see how God, while he punishes hypocrites, at the same time remembers believers, and opens the way for his mercy. We ought to observe this wonderful arrangement, that amidst the most dreadful deaths still the Church remains safe. Who would ever have thought that Jerusalem would be delivered from the vast army of the two kings? Or, that the kingdom of Syria, which was then in a flourishing condition, would quickly be overturned? Or, that Samaria was not far from destruction? And in the mean time, that the Assyrians, on whom the Jews relied, would do them more injury than the Israelites and Syrians had ever done? All these things the Lord did for the sake of preserving his Church, but at the same time in such a manner that he likewise took vengeance on the wickedness of King Ahaz.

Calvin: Isa 7:18

18.And it shall be in that day The Jews thought that the Assyrians were bound by their league with them; but the Prophet ridicules this folly, and declares that they will be ready at God’s bidding to drive them in any direction that he thinks fit. Yet instead of command he employs the metaphor hiss, in allusion to the climate of those kingdoms of which he speaks; for Egypt abounds in flies, because the country is hot and marshy; and when the air is both hot and moist, there must be produced a great abundance of flies. Assyria, on the other hand, abounded in bees; and when he says that he will bring them by a hiss, he alludes to the natural habits of bees and flies, but he means that he will find no difficulty in sending them. As if he had said, “There will be no need of great exertion; for as soon as I shall give the sign, they will instantly run.” In this manner he shows what efficacy belongs to his secret operation or design, that by a hiss he compels the most powerful nations to yield obedience.

Calvin: Isa 7:19

19.And they shall come He follows out the same metaphor; for bees commonly seek nests for themselves in caverns, or valleys and bushes, and such like places; as if he had said that there would not be a corner in which the enemy would not settle down and dwell. It is unnecessary to give ourselves much trouble in explaining why he speaks of bushes and thorns rather than of other things, for the language is figurative. And yet I have no doubt that he intended to state, that whether they hide themselves in caverns, or seek concealment in valleys, there will be no escape; for the enemy will take possession of the whole country.

Hence we again infer what has been formerly observed, that nothing takes place at random or by chance, but that everything is governed by the hand of God. Again, though wicked men may rage and may be hurried forward in blind attack, still God puts a bridle on them that they may promote his glory. Therefore, when we see that wicked men throw everything into disorder, let us not think that God has laid the bridle on their neck, that they may rush forward wherever they please; but let us be fully convinced that their violent attacks are under control. From this we ought to derive wonderful consolation amidst those disturbances in which the Christian world is so deeply involved, and by the violence of which it is so powerfully shaken, that almost everything appears to be in a state of confusion. We should consider that the Lord has a concealed bridle by which he restrains furious beasts, so that they cannot break through wherever the madness of their rage drives them, or go beyond the limits which the Lord prescribes to them.

Calvin: Isa 7:20

20.The Lord will shave with a hired razor. He now employs a different metaphor, and compares those enemies by whom the Lord had determined to afflict Judea at the appointed time, to a razor, by which the beard and hair are shaved, and other excrescences of the same kind are removed. ב ( beth) is here superfluous, and is only employed in accordance with the Hebrew idiom, to denote an instrument, and, therefore, I have merely rendered it he will shave with a razor. What he means he immediately explains; namely, that the Assyrians will serve for a razor in the hand of God, and that they will come from a distant country.

Who are beyond the river This means that Euphrates will not hinder them from passing over to execute the commands of God. He likewise adds, that it will not be some portion of that nation rushing forward of its own accord into foreign territories, or wandering without a settled leader; but that the king himself will lead them, so that the nation and the king at the same time will overwhelm Judea, and it will sink under such a burden.

A hired razor It is not without reason that he says that this razor is hired; for he expresses by it the dreadful nature of the calamity which would be brought upon them by the Assyrians. If a man make use of a hired horse or a hired sword, he will use it the more freely, and will not spare or take care of it as he would do with his own, for men wish to gain advantage from what they have hired to the full value of the hire. Thus the Lord threatens that he will not at all spare the razor, though he should be under the necessity of blunting it, which means, that he will send the Assyrians with mad violence and rage. If the Lord took such dreadful vengeance on the Jews for those reasons which the Prophet formerly enumerated, we ought to fear lest we be punished in the same manner; or rather, we ought to dread the razor with which he has already begun to shave us.

The head and the hair of the feet By the hair of the feet he means the lower parts; for by the feet is meant all that is below the belly, and it is a figure of speech, by which a part is taken for the whole. ¹¹⁴ In short, he means that the whole body, and even the beard, must be shaved. Now, if we set aside the figures, and wish to get at the plain and natural meaning, it is as if he had said, that this shaving will reach from the top of the head down to the feet, and that kings and princes will not be exempted from that calamity, but that they also must feel the edge of the razor

Calvin: Isa 7:21

21.And it shall come to pass on that day In these verses, down to the end of the chapter, the Prophet describes the state of a country torn and wasted; for he intends to present a striking and lively picture of such overwhelming distress that, wherever you turn your eyes, nothing is to be seen but the traces of frightful desolation. Some think that a mitigation of punishment is here promised, but we shall soon see that this does not agree with the context. Though he employs the appellation, a man, without any limitation, yet strictly it is of the richest men that he speaks; for he does not say that every one will have so many; but they who formerly were accustomed to rear a large number of oxen and sheep will be satisfied with having a few. He means, therefore, that all will be reduced to very deep poverty. Some think that the Hebrew word which the Prophet employs, יחיה , ( yechaiyeh,) he shall quicken, means “to deliver from death;” but the meaning which I have adopted is more natural and more generally approved.

Calvin: Isa 7:22

22.On account of the abundance of milk Some explain it thus: “there will scarcely be as much obtained from one cow as would be required for the food of a family;” for those who rear cattle do not feed on milk alone, but likewise make cheeses, and have butter to sell. When, therefore, he says, that out of all their abundance nothing more would be produced than what was necessary for the use of the family, in the opinion of those commentators it denotes poverty. Others think that this is a promise of fertility, that however small may be the number of their cows and sheep, still they will have abundant means of support. A third exposition is preferable; for it appears as if the Prophet intended to show that the men will be so few in number that a small quantity of milk will be sufficient for them all; and it is a far heavier affliction that a country should want inhabitants than that it should have a small supply of herds and flocks.

In the preceding verse Isaiah declared, that Judea would be so impoverished, that very few herds and flocks would be left; but now he adds that the men will be still fewer, for a very little milk will be sufficient for the inhabitants of the land. I adopt this exposition the more readily, because here a promise would be inappropriate. The former sense is forced; and he does not speak only of cattle-feeders who had cows, but of all the inhabitants; for he expressly says, Every one that shall be left, and by that expression he again denotes the smallness of their number. His statement, therefore, is intended to show, that the country will be so generally forsaken and so miserably wasted, that no great supply of milk and butter will be needed; for, when the devastation has taken place, there will be few men left.

Calvin: Isa 7:23

23.A thousand vines As to the opinion of those who think that Isaiah here comforts believers, I pass it by without refutation; for it is sufficiently refuted by the context, and the words plainly declare that Isaiah continues to threaten destruction, and to describe the desolation of the land. Others think that the meaning is this, “Where a thousand vines were, which were sold for a thousand pieces of silver, there briers and thorns will be found.” But it is plain that this would be far too low a price, if the statement were applied to the whole country; for who would think of reckoning a shekel to be the price of a vine, which is the most precious of all possessions? It is of the same import with a common expression, “to sell for a trifle,” to give away for a piece of bread; ¹¹⁵ when anything is sold at a very low price. Any field, however barren or uncultivated, might be sold at a higher price, if due attention were paid to the cultivation of land, as is usually done where there is a crowded population.

On account of briers and thorns He assigns a reason for the alteration of the price, which makes it evident that he speaks of desolation. On account of briers and thorns, says he; for there will be none to cultivate the land, which usually happens when a heavy calamity has been sustained. ל , ( lamed,) which some render to or for, means, I think, on account of; for, everything having been thrown into confusion by the fury of the invading army, there are no vinedressers or laborers, and the most highly cultivated lands must have been covered over and choked up by briers and thorns. The meaning therefore is, that the inhabitants will be so few, that you will scarcely find and one that would give the smallest coin to buy the most valuable estates.

Calvin: Isa 7:24

24.With arrows and bow shall they come thither The verb יבא , ( yabo,) he shall come, is in the singular number; but it ought to be explained by the plural, that the archers will march through Judea. Some think that Isaiah speaks of bows and arrows, because such would be the dread of enemies, that no man unarmed would venture to approach his possessions. But I consider it to be more probable that the Prophet means that, where the richest cultivation formerly existed, opportunity for hunting will be found; for there the wild beasts have their dens. Now, it is a most wretched change, when fields formerly cultivated and fertile are turned into woods and thickets. By bow and arrow here, therefore, I understand hunting, in this sense: “it shall not be approached by husbandmen but by hunters, and they shall not plant or dress vines, but chase wild beasts.” In short, it means nothing else than frightful desolation, which shall change the aspect of the land.

Calvin: Isa 7:25

25.And on all the hills that are dug with the hoe Here the Prophet appears to contradict himself; for, having hitherto spoken of the desolation of the land, he now describes what may be called a new condition, when he says that, where thorns and briers were, there oxen will feed. The consequence has been, that some have applied these words to the consolation of the people. But the intention of the Prophet is totally different; for he means that hills, which were at a great distance from a crowded population, and which could not be approached without much difficulty, will be fit for pasturage, on account of the great number of men who go thither; that is, because men will betake themselves to desert mountains, which formerly were inaccessible, there will be no need to be afraid of briers, ¹¹⁶ for there will be abundance of inhabitants. Now, this is a most wretched state of things, when men cannot escape death but by resorting to thorns and briers; for he means hills formerly desolate and uncultivated, in which men shall seek a residence and abode, because no part of the country will be safe. Thus he describes a distressful and melancholy condition of the whole country, and destruction so awful that the aspect of the country shall be altogether different from what it had formerly been.

When he foretold these things to King Ahaz, there can be no doubt that Ahaz despised them; for that wicked king, relying on his forces and on his league with the Assyrians, settled, as it were, on his lees, as soon as the siege of the city was raised. But Isaiah was bound to persevere in the discharge of his office, in order to show that there was no help but from God, and to inform the wretched hypocrite, that his destruction would come from that quarter from which he expected his preservation.

TSK: Isa 7:16

before : Deu 1:39; Jon 4:11

the land : Isa 8:4, Isa 9:11, Isa 17:1-3; 2Ki 15:29, 2Ki 15:30, 2Ki 16:9

TSK: Isa 7:17

bring upon : Isa 8:7, Isa 8:8, Isa 10:5, Isa 10:6, 36:1-37:38; 2Kings 18:1-19:37; 2Ch 28:19-21, 32:1-33; 2Ch 33:11, 2Ch 36:6-20; Neh 9:32

the day : 1Ki 12:16-19; 2Ch 10:16-19

TSK: Isa 7:18

hiss : Isa 5:26

fly : Isa 30:1, Isa 30:2, Isa 31:1; Exo 8:21, Exo 8:24; Deu 1:44, Deu 7:20; Jos 24:12; Psa 118:12

bee : Isa 7:17; 2Ki 23:33, 2Ki 23:34

TSK: Isa 7:19

in the holes : Isa 2:19, Isa 2:21; 2Ch 33:11; Jer 16:16; Mic 7:17

bushes : or, commendable trees

TSK: Isa 7:20

shave : Isa 10:6; 2Ki 16:7, 2Ki 16:8; 2Ch 28:20,2Ch 28:21; Jer 27:6, Jer 27:7; Eze 5:1-4, Eze 29:18, Eze 29:20

head : Isa 1:5, Isa 9:14-17, Isa 24:2

TSK: Isa 7:21

a man : Isa 7:25, Isa 5:17, Isa 17:2, Isa 37:30; Jer 39:10

TSK: Isa 7:22

butter and honey : Isa 7:15; 2Sa 17:29; Mat 3:4

land : Heb. midst of the land

TSK: Isa 7:23

a thousand vines : Son 8:11, Son 8:12; Mat 21:33

be for briers : Isa 5:6, Isa 32:12-14; Jer 4:26; Heb 6:8

TSK: Isa 7:24

Gen 27:3

TSK: Isa 7:25

but it : Isa 7:21, Isa 7:22, Isa 13:20-22, Isa 17:2; Zep 2:6

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Isa 7:16

The land that thou abhorrest - The land concerning which thou art so much "alarmed or distressed;"that is, the united land of Syria and Ephraim. It is mentioned here as ‘ the land,’ or as one land, because they were united then in a firm alliance, so as to constitute, in fact, or for the purposes of invasion and conquest, one people or nation. The phrase, ‘ which thou abhorrest,’ means properly, which thou loathest, the primary idea of the word - קוץ qûts - being to feel a nausea, or to vomit. It then means to fear, or to feel alarm; and this, probably, is the meaning here. Abaz, however, evidently looked upon the nations of Syria and Samaria with disgust, as well as with alarm. This is the construction which is given of this passage by the Vulgate, Calvin, Grotius, Junins, Gataker, and Piscator, as well as by our common version. Another construction, however, has been given of the passage by Vitringa, JohnD. Michaelis, Lowth, Gesenius, Rosenmuller, Hengstenberg, and Hendewerk. According to this, the meaning is not that the "land"should be the object of abhorrence, but that the kings themselves were the objects of dislike or dread; and not merely that the two kings should be removed, but that the land itself was threatened with desolation. This construction is free from the objections of an exegetical kind to which the other is open, and agrees better with the idiom of the Hebrew. According to this, the correct translation would be:

For before the child shall learn to refuse the

Evil and to choose the good,

Desolate shall be the land, before whose two

Kings thou art in terror.’

Of both her kings - Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the temple, and sent it as a present to the king of Assyria. Induced by this, the king of Assyria marched against Damascus and killed Rezin, 2Ki 16:9. This occurred but a short time after the threatened invasion of the land by Rezin and Remaliah, in the "third"year of the reign of Ahaz, and, consequently, about one year after this prophecy was delivered. Pekah, the son of Remaliah, was slain by Hoshea, the son of Elah, who conspired against him, killed him, and reigned in his stead. This occurred in the fourth year of the reign of Ahaz, for Pekah reigned twenty years. Ahaz began to reign in the seventeenth year of the reign of Pekah, and as Pekah was slain after he had reigned twenty years, it follows that he was slain in the fourth year of the reign of Ahaz - perhaps not more than two yearn after this prophecy was delivered; see 2Ki 15:27, 2Ki 15:30; 2Ki 16:1. We have thus arrived at a knowledge of the time intended by Isaiah in Isa 7:16. The whole space of time was not, probably, more than two years.

Opinions on the Intrepretation of Isaiah 7:14-16

A great variety of opinions have been entertained by interpreters in regard to this passage Isa 7:14-16. It may be useful, therefore, to state briefly what those opinions have been, and then what seems to be the true meaning.

(i) The first opinion is that which supposes that by the ‘ virgin’ the wife of Ahaz is referred to, and that by the child which should be born, the prophet refers to Hezekiah. This is the opinion of the modern Jewish commentators generally. This interpretation prevailed among the Jews in the time of Justin. But this was easily shown by Jerome to be false. Ahaz reigned in Jerusalem but sixteen years 2Ki 17:2, and Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign 2Ki 18:2, and of course was not less than nine years old when this prophecy was delivered. Kimchi and Abarbanel then resorted to the supposition that Ahaz had a second wife, and that this refers to a child that was to be born of her. This supposition cannot be proved to be false, though it is evidently a mere supposition. It has been adopted by the Jews, because they were pressed by the passage by the early Christians, as constituting an argument for the divinity of Christ. The ancient Jews, it is believed, referred it mainly to the Messiah.

(ii) Others have supposed, that the prophet designated some virgin who was then present when the king and Isaiah held their conference, and that the meaning is, ‘ as surely as this virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, so surely shall the land be forsaken of its kings.’ Thus Isenbiehl, Bauer, Cube, and Steudel held, as quoted by Hengstenberg, "Christol."i. p. 341.

(iii) Others suppose that the ‘ virgin’ was not an actual, but only an ideal virgin. Thus Michaelis expresses it: ‘ By the time when one who is yet a virgin can bring forth (that is, in nine months), all will be happily changed, and the present impending danger so completely passed away, that if you were yourself to name the child, you would call him Immanuel.’ Thus Eichhorn, Paulus, Hensler, and Ammon understand it; see "Hengstenberg."

(iv) Others suppose that the ‘ virgin’ was the prophet’ s wife. Thus Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Faber, and Gesenius. Against this supposition there is only one objection which has been urged that is of real force, and that is, that the prophet already had a son, and of course his wife could not be spoken of as a virgin. But this objection is entirely removed by the supposition, which is by no means improbable, that the former wife of the prophet was dead, and that he was about to be united in marriage to another who was a virgin.

In regard to the prophecy itself, there have been three opinions:

(i) That it refers "exclusively"to some event in the time of the prophet; to the birth of a child then, either of the wife of Ahaz, or of the prophet, or of some other unmarried female. This would, of course, exclude all reference to the Messiah. This was formerly my opinion; and this opinion I expressed and endeavored to maintain, in the first composition of these notes. But a more careful examination of the passage has convinced me of its error, and satisfied me that the passage has reference to the Messtah. The reasons for this opinion I shall soon state.

(ii) The second opinion is, that it has "exclusive and immediate"reference to the Messiah; that it does not refer at all to any event which was "then"to occur, and that to Ahaz the future birth of a Messiah from a virgin, was to be regarded as a pledge of the divine protection, and an assurance of the safety of Jerusalem. Some of the objections to this view I shall soon state.

(iii) The third opinion, therefore, is that which "blends"these two, and which regards the prophet as speaking of the birth of a child which would soon take place of someone who was then a virgin - an event which could be known only to God, and which would, therefore, constitute a sign, or demonstration to Ahaz of the truth of what Isaiah said; but that the prophet intentionally so used language which would "also"mark a more important event, and direct the minds of the king and people onward to the future birth of one who should more fully answer to all that is here said of the child that would be born, and to whom the name Immanuel would be more appropriately given. This, I shall endeavor to show, must be the correct interpretation. In exhibiting the reasons for this opinion, we may, first, state the evidence that the prediction refers to some child that would be born "soon"as a pledge that the land would be forsaken of its kings; and secondly, the evidence that it refers also to the Messiah in a higher and fuller sense.

I. Evidence That the Prophecy Refers to Some Event Which Was Soon to Occur - To the Birth of a Child of Some One Who Was Then a Virgin, or Unmarried

(i) It is the "obvious"interpretation. It is that which would strike the great mass of people accustomed to interpret language on the principles of common sense. If the passage stood by itself; if the seventh and eighth chapters were "all"that we had; if there were no allusion to the passage in the New Testament; and if we were to sit down and merely look at the circumstances, and contemplate the narrative, the unhesitating opinion of the great mass of people would be, that it "must"have such a reference. This is a good rule of interpretation. That which strikes the mass of people; which appears to people of sound sense as the meaning of a passage on a simple perusal of it, is likely to be the true meaning of a writing.

(ii) Such an interpretation is demanded by the circumstances of the case. The immediate point of the inquiry was not about the "ultimate and final"safety of the kingdom - which would be demonstrated indeed by the announcement that the Messiah would appear - but it was about a present matter; about impending danger. An alliance was formed between Syria and Samaria. An invasion was threatened. The march of the allied armies had commenced. Jerusalem was in consternation, and Ahaz had gone forth to see if there were any means of defense. In this state of alarm, and at this juncture, Isaiah went to assure him that there was no cause for fear. It was not to assure him that the nation should be ultimately and finally safe - which might be proved by the fact that the Messiah would come, and that, therefore, God would preserve the nation; but the pledge was, that he had no reason to fear "this"invasion, and that within a short space of time the land would ‘ be forsaken of both its kings.’ How could the fact that the Messiah would come more than seven hundred years afterward, prove this? Might not Jerusalem be taken and subdued, as it was afterward by the Chaldeans, and yet it be true that the Messiah would come, and that God would manifest himself as the protector of his people? Though, therefore, the assurance that the Messiah would come would be a general proof and pledge that the nation would be preserved and ultimately safe, yet it would not be a pledge of the "specific and immediate"thing which occupied the attention of the prophet, and of Ahaz. It would not, therefore, be a ‘ sign’ such as the prophet offered to give, or a proof of the fulfillment of the specific prediction under consideration. This argument I regard as unanswerable. It is so obvious, and so strong, that all the attempts to answer it, by those who suppose there was an immediate and exclusive reference to the Messiah, have been entire failures.

(iii) It is a circumstance of some importance that Isaiah regarded himself and his children as ‘ signs’ to the people of his time; see Isa 8:18. In accordance with this view, it seems he had named one child Shear-Jashub, Isa 7:3; and in accordance with the same view, he afterward named another Maher-shalal-hash-baz - both of which names are significant. This would seem to imply that he meant here to refer to a similar fact, and to the birth of a son that should be a sign also to the people of his time.

(iv) An unanswerable reason for thinking that it refers to some event which was soon to occur, and to the birth of a child "before"the land should be forsaken of the two kings, is the record contained in Isa 8:1-4. That record is evidently connected with this account, and is intended to be a public assurance of the fulfillment of what is here predicted respecting the deliverance of the land from the threatened invasion. In that passage, the prophet is directed to take a great roll Isa 7:1, and make a record concerning the son that was to be born; he calls public witnesses, people of character and well-known reputation, in attestation of the transaction Isa 7:2; he approaches the prophetess Isa 7:3; and it is expressly declared Isa 7:4 that before the child should have ‘ knowledge to say, My father, and my mother,’ that is, be able to discern between good and evil Isa 7:16, ‘ the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria’ should be ‘ taken away before the king of Assyria.’ This is so evidently a completion of the prophecy in Isa. vii., and a solemn fulfilling of it in a manner that should be satisfactory to Ahaz and the people, that it is impossible, it seems to me, to regard it any otherwise than as a real transaction. Hengstenberg, and those who suppose the prophecy to refer "immediately and exclusively"to the Messiah, are obliged to maintain that that was a ‘ symbolical transaction’ - an opinion which might, with the same propriety, be held of any historical statement in the Bible; since there is nowhere to be found a more simple and unvarnished account of mere matter of historical fact than that. The statement, therefore, in Isa. 8, is conclusive demonstration, I think, that there was a reference in Isa 7:14-16, to a child of the prophet that would be soon born, and that would be a "pledge"of the divine protection, and a "proof or sign"to Ahaz that his land would be safe.

It is no objection to this that Isaiah then had a son Isa 7:3, and that, therefore, the mother of that son could not be a virgin. There is no improbability in the supposition that the mother of that son was deceased, and that Isaiah was about again to be married. Such an event is not so uncommon as to make it a matter of ridicule (see Hengstenberg, p. 342); or to render the supposition wholly incredible.

Nor is it any objection that another name was given to the child that was born to Isaiah; Isa 8:1, Isa 8:3. Nothing was more common than to give two names to children. It might have been true that the name usually given to him was Maher-shalal-hash-baz; and still true that the circumstances of his birth were such an evidence of the divine protection, and such an emblem of the divine guardianship, as to make proper the name Immanuel; see the note at Isa 7:14. It may be observed, also, that on the supposition of the strict and exclusive Messianic interpretation, the same objection might be made, and the same difficulty would lie. It was no more true of Jesus of Nazareth than of the child of Isaiah, that he was commonly called Immanuel. He had another name also, and was called by that other name. Indeed, there is not the slightest evidence that the Lord Jesus was "ever"designated by the name Immanuel as a proper name. All that the passage means is, that such should be the circumstances of the birth of the child as to render the name Immanuel proper; not that it would be applied to him in fact as the usual appellation.

Nor is it any objection to this view, that the mind of the prophet is evidently directed onward "to"the Messiah; and that the prophecy terminates Isa 8:8; Isa 9:1-7 with a reference to him. That this is so, I admit; but nothing is more common in Isaiah than for him to commence a prophecy with reference to some remarkable deliverance which was soon to occur, and to terminate it by a statement of events connected with a higher deliverance under the Messiah. By the laws of "prophetic suggestion,"the mind of the prophet seized upon resemblances and analogies; was carried on to future times, which were suggested by something that he was saying or contemplating as about to occur, until the mind was absorbed, and the primary object forgotten in the contemplation of the more remote and glorious event; see the Introduction to Isaiah, Section 7. III. (3.)

\qc II. Evidence That the Prophecy Refers to the Messiah

(i) The passage in Mat 1:22-23, is an evidence that "he"regarded this as having a reference to the Messiah, and that it had a complete fulfillment in him. This quotation of it also shows that that was the common interpretation of the passage in his time, or he would not thus have introduced it. It cannot be "proved,"indeed, that Matthew means to affirm that this was the primary and original meaning of the prophecy, or that the prophet had a direct and exclusive reference to the Messiah; but it proves that in his apprehension the words had a "fulness"of meaning, and an adaptedness to the actual circumstances of the birth of the Messiah, which would accurately and appropriately express that event; see the notes at the passage in Matthew. The prophecy was not completely "fulfilled, filled up, fully and adequately met,"until applied to the Messiah. That event was so remarkable; the birth of Jesus was so strictly of a virgin, and his nature so exalted, that it might be said to be a "complete and entire"fulfillment of it. The language of Isaiah, indeed, was applicable to the event referred to immediately in the time of Ahaz, and expressed that with clearness; but it more appropriately and fully expressed the event referred to by Matthew, and thus shows that the prophet designedly made use of language which would be appropriate to a future and most glorious event.

(ii) An argument of no slight importance on this subject may be drawn from the fact, that this has been the common interpretation in the Christian church. I know that this argument is not conclusive; nor should it be pressed beyond its due and proper weight. It is of force only because the united and almost uniform impression of mankind, for many generations, in regard to the meaning of a written document, is not to be rejected without great and unanswerable arguments. I know that erroneous interpretations of many passages have prevailed in the church; and that the interpretation of many passages of Scripture which have prevailed from age to age, have been such as have been adapted to bring the whole subject of scriptural exegesis into contempt. But we should be slow to reject that which has had in its favor the suffrages of the unlearned, as well as the learned, in the interpretation of the Bible. The interpretation which refers this passage to the Messiah has been the prevailing one in all ages. It was followed by all the fathers and other Christian expositors until the middle of the eighteenth century ("Hengstenberg"); and is the prevailing interpretation at the present time. Among those who have defended it, it is sufficient to mention the names of Lowth, Koppe, Rosenmuller, and Hengstenberg, in addition to those names which are found in the well-known English commentaries. It has been opposed by the modern Jews, and by German neologists; but has "not"been regarded as false by the great mass of pious and humble Christians. The argument here is simply that which would be applied in the interpretation of a passage in Homer or Virgil; that where the great mass of readers of all classes have concurred in any interpretation, there is "presumptive evidence"that it is correct - evidence, it is true, which may be set aside by argument, but which is to be admitted to be of some account in making up the mind as to the meaning of the passage in question.

(iii) The reference to the Messiah in the prophecy accords with the "general strain and manner"of Isaiah. It is in accordance with his custom, at the mention of some occurrence or deliverance which is soon to take place, to suffer the mind to fix ultimately on the more remote event of the "same general character,"or lying, so to speak, "in the same range of vision"and of thought; see the Introduction, Section 7. It is also the custom of Isaiah to hold up to prominent view the idea that the nation would not be ultimately destroyed until the great Deliverer should come; that it was safe amidst all revolutions; that vitality would remain like that of a tree in the depth of winter, when all the leaves are stripped off Isa 6:13; and that all their enemies would be destroyed, and the true people of God be ultimately secure and safe under their great Deliverer; see the notes at Isa. 34; Isa 35:1-10.

It is true, that this argument will not be "very"striking except to one who has attentively studied this prophecy; but it is believed, that no one can profoundly and carefully examine the manner of Isaiah, without being struck with it as a very important feature of his mode of communicating truth. In accordance with this, the prophecy before us means, that the nation was safe from this invasion. Ahaz feared the extinction of his kingdom, and the "permanent"annexation of Jerusalem to Syria and Samaria. Isaiah told him that that could not occur; and proffered a demonstration, that in "a very few years"the land would be forsaken of both its kings. "On another ground also it could not be."The people of God were safe. His kingdom could not be permanently destroyed. It must continue until the Messiah should come, and the eye of the prophet, in accordance with his usual custom, glanced to that future event, and he became "totally"absorbed in its contemplation, and the prophecy is finished Isa 9:1-7 by a description of the characteristics of the light that he saw in future times rising in dark Galilee Isa 9:1-2, and of the child that should be born of a virgin then.

In accordance with the same view, we may remark, as Lowth has done, that to a people accustomed to look for a great Deliverer; that had fixed their hopes on one who was to sit on the throne of David, the "language"which Isaiah used here would naturally suggest the idea of a Messiah. It was so animated, so ill adapted to describe his own son, and so suited to convey the idea of a most remarkable and unusual occurrence, that it could scarcely have been otherwise than that they should have thought of the Messiah. This is true in a special manner of the language in Isa 9:1-7.

(iv) An argument for the Messianic interpretation may be derived from the public expectation which was excited by some such prophecy as this. There is a striking similarity between it and one which is uttered by Micah, who was contemporary with Isaiah. Which was penned "first"it would not be easy to show; but they have internal evidence that they both had their origin in an expectation that the Messiah would be born of a virgin; compare the note at Isa 2:2. In Mic 5:2-3, the following prediction occurs: ‘ But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler over Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity. Therefore, will he give them up, until the time when she which travaileth hath brought forth.’ That this passage refers to the birth of the Messiah, is demonstrable from Mat 2:6.

Nothing can be clearer than that this is a prediction respecting the place of his birth. The Sanhedrim, when questioned by Herod respecting the place of his birth, answered without the slightest hesitation, and referred to this place in Micah for proof. The expression, ‘ she which travaileth,’ or, ‘ she that bears shall bear’ - ילדה יולדה yôlēdâh yālâdâh , "she bearing shall bear"- refers evidently to some prediction of such a birth; and the word ‘ she that bears’ ( יולדה yôlēdâh ) seems to have been used somewhat in the sense of a proper name, to designate one who was well known, and of whom there had been a definite prediction. Rosenmuller remarks, ‘ She is not indeed expressly called a virgin, but that she is so is self-evident, since she shall bear the hero of divine origin (from everlasting), and consequently not begotten by a mortal. The predictions throw light on each other; Micah discloses the divine origin of the person predicted, Isaiah the wonderful manner of his birth.’ - "Ros.,"as quoted by Hengstenberg. In his first edition, Rosenmuller remarks on Mic 5:2 : ‘ The phrase, "she who shall bear shall bear,"denotes the "virgin"from whom, in a miraculous manner, the people of that time hoped that the Messiah would be born.’ If Micah refers to a well-known existing prophecy, it must evidently be this in Isaiah, since no other similar prophecy occurs in the Old Testament; and if he wrote subsequently to Isaiah, the prediction in Micah must be regarded as a proof that this was the prevailing interpretation of his time.

That this was the prevailing interpretation of those times, is confirmed by the traces of the belief which are to be found extensively in ancient nations, that some remarkable person would appear, who should be born in this manner. The idea of a Deliverer, to be born of a "virgin,"is one that somehow had obtained an extensive prevalence in Oriental nations, and traces of it may be found almost everywhere among them. In the Hindoo Mythology it is said, respecting "Budhu,"that be was born of "Maya,"a goddess of the imagination - a virgin. Among the Chinese, there is an image of a beautiful woman with a child in her arms, which child, they say, was born of a virgin. The passsge in Virgil is well known:

Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna:

Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.

Tu modo mascenti puero, quo ferrea primum

Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo.

Casta fare Lucina: tuus jam regnat Apollo .

Eclog. iv. 4ff.

Comes the last age, by Cumae’ s maid foretold;

Afresh the mighty line of years unrolled.

The Virgin now, now Saturn’ s sway returns;

Now the blest globe a heaven-sprung child adorns,

Whose genial power shall whelm earth’ s iron race,

And plant once more the golden in its place. -

Thou chaste Lucina, but that child sustain,

And lo! disclosed thine own Apollo’ s reign.

Wrangham

This passage, though applied by Virgil to a different subject, has been usually regarded as having been suggested by that in Isaiah. The coincidence of thought is remarkable on any supposition; and there is no improbability in the supposition that the expectation of a great Deliverer to be born of a virgin had prevailed extensively, and that Virgil made it up in this beautiful manner and applied it to a prince in his own time. On the prevalent expectation of such a Deliverer, see the note at Mat 2:2.

(v) But the great and the unanswerable argument for the Messianic interpretation is derived from the conclusion of the prophecy in Isa 8:8, and especially in Isa 9:1-7. The prophecy in Isa 9:1-7 is evidently connected with this; and yet "cannot"be applied to a son of Isaiah, or to any other child that should be then born. If there is any passage in the Old Testament that "must"be applied to the Messiah, that is one; see the notes on the passage. And if so, it proves, that though the prophet at first had his eye on an event which was soon to occur, and which would be to Ahaz full demonstration that the land would be safe from the impending invasion, yet that he employed language which would describe also a future glorious event, and which would be a fuller demonstration that God would protect the people. He became fully absorbed in that event, and his language at last referred to that alone. The child then about to be born would, in most of the circumstances of his birth, be an apt emblem of him who should be born in future times, since both would be a demonstration of the divine power and protection. To both, the name Immanuel, though not the common name by which either would be designated, might be appropriately given. Both would be born of a virgin - the former, of one who was then a virgin, and the birth of whose child could be known only to God - the latter, of one who should be appropriately called "the"virgin, and who should remain so at the time of his birth. This seems to me to be the meaning of this difficult prophecy. The considerations in favor of referring it to the birth of a child in the time of Isaiah, and which should be a pledge to him of the safety of his kingdom "then,"seem to me to be unanswerable. And the considerations in favor of an ultimate reference to the Messiah - a reference which becomes in the issue total and absorbing - are equally unanswerable; and if so, then the twofold reference is clear.

Barnes: Isa 7:17

The Lord shall bring ... - The prophet having assured Ahaz that his kingdom should be free from the invasion that then threatened it, proceeds, however, to state to him that it would be endangered from another source.

Thy father’ s house - The royal family - the princes and nobles.

Days that have not come - Times of calamity that have not been equalled.

From the day that Ephraim departed from Judah - From the time of the separation of the ten tribes from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

Even the king of Assyria - This was done in the following manner. Though the siege which Rezin and Pekah had undertaken was not at this time successful, yet they returned the year after with stronger forces, and with counsels better concerted, and again besieged the city. This was in consequence of the continued and increasing wickedness of Ahaz; 2Ch 28:1-5. In this expedition, a great multitude were taken captives, and carried to Damascus; 2Ch 28:5. Pekah at this time also killed 120,000 of the Jews in one day 2Ch 28:6; and Zichri, a valiant man of Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the son of Ahaz. At this time, also, Pekah took no less than 200,000 of the kingdom of Judah, proposing to take them to Samaria, but was prevented by the influence of the prophet Oded; 2Ch 28:8-15. In this calamity, Ahaz stripped the temple of its treasures and ornaments, and sent them to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, to induce him to come and defend him from the united arms of Syria and Ephraim. The consequence was, as might have been foreseen, that the king of Assyria took occasion, from this, to bring increasing calamities upon the kingdom of Ahaz. He first, indeed, killed Rezin, and took Damascus; 2Ki 16:7.

Having subdued the kingdoms of Damascus and Ephraim, Tiglath-pileser became a more formidable enemy to Ahaz than both of them. His object was not to aid Ahaz, but to distress him 2Ch 28:20; and his coming professedly and at the request of Ahaz, to his help, was a more formidable calamity than the threatened invasion of both Rezin and Pekah. God has power to punish a wicked nation in his own way. When they seek human aid, he can make this a scourge. He has kings and nations under his control; and though a wicked prince may seek earthly alliance, yet it is easy for God to allow such allies to indulge their ambition and love of rapine, and make them the very instruments of punishing the nation which they were called to defend. It should be observed that this phrase, ‘ even the king of Assyria,’ is by many critics thought to be spurious, or a marginal reading, or gloss, that has by some means crept into the text. The ground of this opinion is, that it does not harmonize entirely with the following verse, where "Egypt"is mentioned as well as Assyria, and that it does not agree with the poetical form of the passage.

Barnes: Isa 7:18

In that day the Lord shall hiss - see the note at Isa 5:26.

For the fly - That is, for the army, or the multitude of people. The comparison of a numerous army with "flies"is not uncommon; see Homer’ s "Iliad,"B. ii. 469, etc.

- Thick as insects play,

The wandering nation of a summer’ s day.

That, drawn by milky streams at evening hours

In gathered swarms surround the rural bowers;

From pail to pail with busy murmur run

The gilded legions, glittering in the sun.

Pope.

The comparison is drawn probably from the "number,"but also is intended to indicate the troublesome character, of the invaders. Perhaps, also, there is an allusion here to the well-known fact that one of the ten plagues of Egypt was caused by numerous swarms of flies; Exo 8:21-24. An army would be brought up from that country as numerous, as troublesome, and as destructive as was that swarm of flies. The following description, by Bruce, of a species of flies in Abyssinia and the adjacent regions, will give an idea of the character of this calamity, and the force of the language used here:

‘ This insect is called Zimb; it has not been described by any naturalist. It is, in size, very little larger than a bee, of a thicker proportion, and has wings, which are broader than those of a bee, placed separate, like those of a fly: they are of pure gauze, without color or spot upon them; the head is large, the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the end of it a strong pointed hair, of about a quarter of an inch long; the lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs; and this pencil of hairs, when joined together, makes a resistance to the finger, nearly equal to that of a strong hog’ s bristle; its legs are serrated in the inside, and the whole covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain, until they die, worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains, but to leave the black earth, and hasten down to the sands of Atbara; and there they remain, while the rains last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue them further.

Though his size be immense, as is his strength, and his body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, yet even the camel is not capable to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara, for when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs, break out into large bosses, which swell, break, and putrefy, to the certain destruction of the creature. Even the elephant and rhinoceros, who, by reason of their enormous bulk, and the vast quantity of food and water they daily need, cannot shift to desert and dry places as the season may require, are obliged to roll themselves in mud and mire, which, when dry, coats them over like armor, and enables them to stand their ground against this winged assassin; yet I have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause.

All the inhabitants of the seacoast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba, and the south coast of the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand, in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration; the inhabitants of all the countries, from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile, and Astaboras, are once a year obliged to change their abode, and seek protection in the sand of Beja; nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band were in their way, capable of spoiling them or half their substance. This fly has no sting, though he seemed to me to be rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and sudden than that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is something particular in the sound or buzzing of this insect; it is a jarring noise together with a humming, which induces me to believe it proceeds, at least in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs at his snout.’

The uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt - The remotest part of the land - that is, from the whole country. Egypt was watered by a single river; the Nile. But this river emptied into the Mediterranean by several mouths; and from this river also were cut numerous canals to water the land. These are intended by the "rivers"of Egypt; see the notes at Isa 19:6-7. Those canals would be stagnant for no small part of the year; and around them would be produced, as is usual near stagnant waters, great quantities of flies. This prophecy was fulfilled by the invasion of the land in subsequent times by the Egyptians; 2Ki 23:33-34; 2Ch 35:20, 2Ch 35:24; 2Ch 36:1-2.

And for the bee - That is, for the "army."An army is compared to "bees"on account of their number; perhaps also on account of the pungency and severity of the sting. The comparison is common; see Deu 1:44; Deu 7:20; Psa 118:12. The Chaldee has rendered this verse, ‘ The Lord shall call to a people girded with the armies of the brave, who are numerous as flies, and shall bring them from the ends of the land of Egypt; and strong armies, strong as bees, and shall bring them from the land of Assyria.’ No prophecy was ever more completely fulfilled than this by the successive invasions of Pharaoh-Necho, Esarhaddon and Nebuchadnezzar; see Isa. 36; 37; 2Ch 36:7-21.

Barnes: Isa 7:19

And they shall come - The idea in this verse is, that they would spread over the land, and lay it waste. The poetic image of flies and bees is kept up; meaning, that the armies would be so numerous as to occupy and infest all the land.

And shall rest - As bees do. Thus the "locusts"are said to have "rested"in all the land of Egypt; Exo 10:14.

In the desolate valleys - The word translated "valleys"usually means "a valley with a brook,"or a brook itself. The Chaldee translates it, ‘ In the streets of cities.’ But the idea is derived from the habits of flies and bees. The meaning is, that they should fill all the land, as innumerable swarms of flies and bees - would settle down everywhere, and would infest or consume everything. Bees, probably, chose situations near to running streams. Virgil, in his directions about selecting a place for an apiary, gives the following among others:

At liquidi fontes, et stagna virentia musco

Adsint, et tennis fugiens per gramina rivus .

Georg. iv. 18, 19.

But there let pools invite with moss arrayed,

Clear fount and rill that purls along the glade.

Sotheby.

In the holes of the rocks - Probably the same image is referred to here. It is well known that in Judea, as well as elsewhere, bees were accustomed to live in the holes or caverns of the rocks. They were very numerous; and the figure here is, that the Assyrians would be numerous as the swarms of bees were in that land, even in the high and inaccessible rocks; compare Isa 2:19-21.

Upon all thorns - The image here is kept up of flies and bees resting on everything. "Thorns"here refer to those trees and shrubs that were of little value; but even on these they would rest.

All bushes - Hebrew ‘ All trees that are commendable, or that are to be praised;’ see the margin. The word denotes those shrubs and trees that were objects of "praise;"that is, that were cultivated with great attention and care, in opposition to "thorns"that grew wild, and without cultivation, and that were of little value. The meaning of the passage is, that the land would be invaded in every part, and that everything, valuable or not, would be laid waste.

Barnes: Isa 7:20

In the same day ... - The idea in this verse is the same as in the preceding, though presented in a different form. The meaning is, that "God"would bring upon them this punishment, but that he would make use of the Assyrian as an "instrument"by which to do it.

Shave - The act of shaving off the hair denotes punishment or disgrace; compare 2Sa 10:4 : ‘ Hanun took David’ s servants, and shaved off one half of their beards;’ 1Ch 19:4.

With a razor - Using them as an instrument. God here claims the power of directing them, and regards them as employed by him; see Isa 10:5-7.

That is hired - This is an allusion to the custom of hiring soldiers, or employing mercenary armies. Thus Great Britain employed mercenary troops, or hired of the Germans bodies of Hessians to carry on the war in America. The meaning here is, that God would employ the Assyrians as his instruments, to effect his purposes, as though they were hired and paid by the plunder and spoil of the nation.

By them beyond the river - The river Euphrates. The Euphrates is usually meant in the Scriptures where ‘ the river’ is mentioned without specifying the name; Psa 72:8; Psa 80:2. This was the river which Abraham had passed; and this, perhaps, was, for a long time, the eastern boundary of their geographical knowledge; see the note at Isa 11:15.

The head - The hair of the head.

The hair of the feet - Or the other parts of the body; of the lower parts of the body.

Shall consume the beard - Shall cut off the beard. This was esteemed particularly disgraceful among the Jews. It is, at this day, among all Eastern nations. The beard is regarded as a distinguished ornament; among the Mahometans, it is sworn by, and no higher insult can be offered than to treat the beard with indignity; compare the note at Isa 50:6. The meaning is here, that God would employ the Assyrian as his instrument to lay waste the land.

Barnes: Isa 7:21

In that day - In the time specified in the previous verses - in the judgments that should be brought upon the land by the Egyptians and Assyrians.

A man shall nourish - Hebrew ‘ Make to live:’ that is, he shall own, or feed.

A young cow - The Hebrew denotes a heifer that gives milk. The state which is denoted by this is that of great poverty. Instead of being engaged in agriculture, of possessing great resources in that time, a man should depend, for the subsistence of himself and his family, on what a single cow and two sheep would yield. Probably this is intended also as a description of the general state of the nation, that it would be reduced to great poverty.

And two sheep - Two here seems to be used to denote a very small number. A man, that is, the generality of people, would be so reduced as to be able to purchase and keep no more.

Barnes: Isa 7:22

For the abundance of milk ... - On account, or by means of the great quantity of milk. This image also denotes that the land should be desolate, and abandoned by its inhabitants. Such a range would the cow and sheep have in the lands lying waste and uncultivated, that they would yield abundance of milk.

For butter and honey - This shall be the condition of all who are left in the land. Agriculture shall be abandoned, The land shall be desolate. The few remaining inhabitants shall be dependent on what a very few cows and sheep shah produce, and on the subsistence which may be derived from honey obtained from the rocks where bees would lodge. Perhaps, also, the swarms of bees would be increased, by the fact that the land would be forsaken, and that it would produce abundance of wild flowers for their subsistence. The general idea is plain, that the land would be desolate. Butter and honey, that is, butter mingled with honey, is a common article of food in the East; see the note at Isa 7:15. D’ Arvieux being in the camp of an Arab prince who lived in much splendor, and who treated him with great regard, was entertained, he tells us, the first morning of his being there, with little loaves, honey, new-churned butter, and cream more delicate than any he ever saw, together with coffee. - "Voy. dans la Pal.,"p. 24. And in another place, he assures us that one of the principal things with which the Arabs regale themselves at breakfast is cream, or new butter mingled with honey. - p. 197. The statement of the prophet here, that the poor of the land should eat butter and honey, is not inconsistent with this account of D’ Arvieux, that it is regarded as an article of food with which even princes treat their guests, for the idea of the prophet is, that when the land should be desolate and comparatively uninhabited, the natural luxuriant growth of the soil would produce an abundance to furnish milk, and that honey would abound where the bees would be allowed to multiply, almost without limit; see Harmer’ s Obs., vol. ii. p. 55. Ed. Lond. 1808.

Barnes: Isa 7:23

The remainder of this chapter is a description of great desolation produced by the invasion of the Assyrians. "Where there were a thousand vines."Where there was a valuable vineyard. In every place, that is, that was well cultivated and valuable.

At a thousand silverlings - The word rendered ‘ silvertings’ here - כסף keseph - denotes, properly, silver, of any amount. But it is also used to denote the silver coin which was in use among the Jews, the shekel. Perhaps this was the only silver coin which, in early times, they possessed, and hence, the word shekel is omitted, and so many pieces of silver are mentioned. Thus, in Gen 20:16, Abimelech says, that he had given Abraham, a thousand of silver’ - that is, a thousand shekels. The shekel was worth about two shillings of our money. It is probable that a vineyard would be valued, in proportion to the number of vines that could be raised on the smallest space; and the meaning is here, that the land that was most fertile, and that produced the most, would be desolate, and would produce only briers and thorns. The land in Judea admits of a high state of cultivation, and requires it, in order to make it productive. When neglected, it becomes as remarkably sterile. At present, it generally bears the marks of great barrenness and sterility. It is under the oppression of Turkish power and exactions; and the consequence is, that, to a traveler, it has the appearance of great barrenness. But, in the high state to which the Jews brought it, it was eminently fertile, and is capable still of becoming so, if it should be placed under a government that would encourage agriculture and bestow freedom. This is the account which all travelers give of it now.

Barnes: Isa 7:24

With arrows and with bows ... - This is a continuation of the description of its desolation. So entirely would it be abandoned, so utterly desolate would it be, that it would become a vast hunting-ground. It would be covered with shrubs and trees that would afford a convenient covert for wild beasts; and would yield to its few inhabitants a subsistence, not by cultivation, but by the bow and the arrow. There can scarcely be a more striking description of utter desolation. But, perhaps, the long captivity of seventy years in Babylon literally fulfilled it. Judea was a land that, at all times, was subject to depredations from wild beasts. On the banks of the Jordan - in the marshes, and amid the reeds that sprung up in the lower bank or border of the river - the lion found a home, and the tiger a resting place; compare Jer 49:19. When the land was for a little time vacated and forsaken, it would be, therefore, soon filled with wild beasts; and during the desolations of the seventy years’ captivity, there can be no doubt that this was literally fulfilled.

Barnes: Isa 7:25

And on all hills ... - All the fertile places in the mountains that used to be cultivated with the spade. Vineyards were often planted on the sides of hills; and those places were among the most productive and fertile in the land; see Isa 5:1.

The mattock - The spade; the garden hoe; or the weeding-hook. An instrument chiefly used, probably, in vineyards.

There shall not come thither - There shall not be.

The fear of briers and thorns - This does not make sense; or if it does, it is not a sense consistent with the connection. The idea of the whole passage is, that the land, even the most fertile parts of it, should be given up to briers and thorns; that is, to desolation. The Hebrew here, is ambiguous. It may mean, ‘ thou shalt not come there, for fear of the briers and thorns.’ That is, the place that was formerly so fertile, that was cultivated with the spade, shall now be so completely covered with thorns, and shall furnish so convenient a resting place for wild beasts and reptiles, as to deter a man from going there. The Septuagint, and the Syriac, however, understand it differently - as denoting that those places should be still cultivated. But this is evidently a departure from the sense of the connection. Lowth understands it in the past tense; ‘ where the fear of briers and thorns never came.’ The general idea of the passage is plain, that those places, once so highly cultivated, would now be desolate.

Shall be for the sending forth ... - Shall be wild, uncultivated, and desolate - vast commons on which oxen and sheep shall feed at large. "Lesser cattle."Hebrew ‘ Sheep, or the flock.’ Sheep were accustomed to range in deserts and uncultivated places, and to obtain there, under the guidance of the shepherd, their subsistence. The description, therefore, in these verses, is one of extensive and wide desolation; and one that was accomplished in the calamities that came upon the land in the invasions by the Egyptians and Assyrians.

Poole: Isa 7:16

For or, yea ; for so this particle is used by way of amplification or addition, Isa 32:13 Jer 14:5,18 . So the sense is, Not only this land of thine shall be preserved until the virgin’ s Son be born, but thine enemy’ s land shall be sorely scourged, and these two kings destroyed, within a very little time.

The child Heb. this child ; not the virgin’ s Son, but the prophet’ s child, Shear-jashub, whom in all probability the prophet, to prevent mistakes, pointed at, and who was brought hither by God’ s special command, Isa 7:3 , and that for this very use; for otherwise his presence was wholly insignificant.

The land the lands, to wit, of Syria and Israel, as is evident from the next words. It is an enallage of the singular for the plural.

That thou abhorrest for its cruel designs and practices against time. Or, which vexeth or molesteth thee, as this word is used, Exo 1:12 Num 22:3 , &c.

Shall be forsaken of both her kings so far shall Pekah and Rezin be from conquering thy land, that they shall lose their own lands, and their lives too; which they did within two years after this time, being both slain by the king of Assyria, 2Ki 15:29,30 16:9 .

Poole: Isa 7:17

The Lord shall bring but although God will deliver you at this time for his own name’ s sake, yet he will remember and requite all your present and following wickedness, and hath a dreadful judgment in store for you.

Upon thee for part of this Assyrian storm fell in Ahaz’ s reign, 2Ch 28:20 .

Upon thy father’ s house upon thy sons and successors, the kings of Judah; the accomplishment whereof is recorded in their history.

Days to wit, evil days, by a synecdoche; or calamities; for days are oft put for the events which happen in them, and especially for judgments or tribulations, as Job 18:20 Psa 137:7 Isa 9:4 Oba 1:12 .

The day that Ephraim departed from Judah when ten tribes revolted from thy father’ s house, and set up another opposite kingdom.

Even the king of Assyria who may well be called their plague or calamity, as he is called the rod of God’ s anger, Isa 10:5 . Or, with (as this Hebrew particle oft signifies) the king , &c.; or, by the king , &c. And king is here put for kings , as Dan 2:37 8:21 .

Poole: Isa 7:18

In that day known to God, and appointed by him for the execution of these judgments.

Shall hiss: See Poole "Isa 5:26".

The fly the flies. So he calls these enemies, to imply either their great numbers, or their speedy march, or their unavoidable assault.

In the uttermost part in, or near, or towards their extremity or end, where they go out into the sea.

Of the rivers of the river Nilus, which may be called rivers, either for its greatness, for which cause the title of rivers is given also to Euphrates, Psa 137:1 , and to Tigris, Nah 2:6 ; or because, towards the end of it, it is divided into seven famous streams, by which it emptieth itself into the midland sea, Isa 11:15 . He seems plainly to design and describe the Egyptians, who were always dangerous neighbours to Judah, and did probably animate and assist the Philistines, and Edomites, and others against them, and at last made a formal invasion and conquest of their land, 2Ki 23:33 , &c. Besides, when the Chaldeans had in good measure subdued the Egyptians, it is very probable that great numbers of the Egyptian soldiers did list themselves in the Chaldean army, and with them invade the land of Judah.

The bee the bees, the Assyrian army, who are compared to bees, as for their numerous forces and orderly march, so for their fierce attempts and mischievous effects.

In the land of Assyria in the empire of Assyria, or Babylon; for these two were united into one empire, and therefore in Scripture are promiscuously called sometimes by one title, and sometimes by the other.

Poole: Isa 7:19

They the flies, and especially the bees.

Shall rest all of them they shall have an easy victory; few or none of them shall be slain in the attempt.

The desolate valleys either,

1. Such as were and had long been desolate. So it signifies the vast numbers of their enemies, which filled all places, both such as were well inhabited, and such as were in a great measure desolate. Or,

2. Such as they found very fruitful, but made them desolate.

The rocks to which possibly the Israelites fled for refuge.

Bushes which he mentions, partly because flies and bees use frequently to rest there, and partly to intimate that no place should escape the fury of this enemy.

Poole: Isa 7:20

Shave with a razor i.e. utterly spoil and destroy, as shaving takes away all the hair, and leaves not any thing of it visible, as there is when the hair is only cut or polled. Hired ; either,

1. By Ahaz, who did hire them, 2Ki 16:7,8 . And so the prophet notes the just judgment of God, in scourging them with a rod of their own making; and by this threatening he endeavours to prevent that wicked design which then was on foot, of hiring Assyrian succours. Or,

2. By God, who did stir them up, and send them upon his errand against Judah, as he threatens, Isa 10:6 , and paid them liberally for that service, as he did Nebuchadnezzar, of which see Jer 25:9 27:6,7 Da 2:37,38 .

The river Euphrates, called the river, by way of eminency, Psa 72:8 Jer 2:18 , beyond which Assyria lay.

By the king of Assyria by the successive kings of the Assyrian empire, Sennacherib, 2Ki 18:13 , &c., Esarhaddon, 2Ch 33:11 , and especially by Nebuchadnezzar, who having subdued the Assyrian monarchy, from thenceforth was king of Assyria as well as of Chaldea. And the prophet rather mentions Assyria than Chaldea or Babylon, partly because the Assyrian began and continued to execute this judgment, although the Babylonian completed it; and partly to inform them that they laid the foundation of their own ruin, by opening the door to the Assyrian, who afterwards entered at his pleasure, and left it open for Nebuchadnezzar.

The hair of the feet of the lower or secret parts, which come under that name, Eze 16:7,25 , and elsewhere, as it hath been noted again and again; and which the Jewish writers affirm to have been shaved in the purification of lepers and Levites, Lev 14:8,9 Nu 8:7 .

The beard which they highly esteemed, as a great ornament. By these metaphorical expressions he signifies the total destruction of their state, from head to foot, from the highest to the lowest.

Poole: Isa 7:21

This and the following verse contain either,

1. A mitigation of the foregoing calamity, or some comfort for the remainders of the people, after the public devastation; or rather,

2. A further declaration of the threatened desolation; which best agrees not only with the foregoing, but also with the following verses. So the sense of this verse is this, They who formerly used to keep great herds of cattle, and many flocks of sheep, shall esteem it a great happiness if they can keep but one cow and two sheep, to keep themselves from extremity of famine.

Poole: Isa 7:22

For the abundance of milk that they shall give because they shall have excellent and large pastures, by reason of the great scarcity of cattle; whereas formerly their lands were ofttimes overstocked with cattle.

Butter and honey may be here mentioned, either,

1. As mean and vulgar food, being very common in those parts; which are opposed to that flesh and corn, and other excellent fruits of the earth, wherewith their land formerly abounded. Or,

2. As very good and pleasant food, which the poorer sort had formerly used to sell, to procure more necessary and cheaper food for themselves; but now the land should be so destitute of people, that there were none to whom they could sell them, and those few who did survive might freely eat all sorts of provisions.

Poole: Isa 7:23

A thousand vines at a thousand silverings or, pieces of silver , as the same word is commonly rendered. Whereby we may understand either,

1. So many pounds; a pound for each vineyard, to wit, for the annual rent. Or,

2. So many shekels, which word is most commonly understood, when no particular kind of coin is expressed, as 2Sa 18:11,12 Mt 26:15 ; and then the meaning is, not that the thousand vineyards were let for a thousand shekels, a vineyard for a shekel, which is a contemptible price; but that each of the thousand vineyards might have been sold or let for a thousand shekels, which was the yearly rent of some excellent vineyards, as may be gathered from Son 8:11 ; except we understand this not of so many vineyards, as other interpreters do, but of so many single vines, as the word properly and generally signifies, planted together in one large vineyard, which may be here meant by the place of the river, and then each vine may be valued at a shekel. But this place may possibly be otherwise rendered, and that exactly according to the Hebrew text, every place where there are a thousand vines, shall be for a thousand pieces of silver , i.e. it shall be valued or offered, either to be let, or rather to be sold, at that price; which was a very low price, and therefore fitly signifies the greatness of the desolation.

It shall even be for briers and thorns because it shall be utterly neglected, and therefore overspread with them. Or, yea,

it shall be for briers and thorns No man will either buy or hire it upon any terms.

Poole: Isa 7:24

With arrows and with bows either to hunt, or to defend themselves from wild beasts, which commonly abide in such desolate and overgrown grounds.

Poole: Isa 7:25

That shall be digged or, that were digged , to wit, formerly; that used to be digged and dressed for the planting of vines, or other choice fruit trees.

There shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: the words thus rendered sound like a promise, but that doth no way agree with the scope of the place. And they may be, and are by some, understood not of briers and thorns growing in those grounds, which would hinder the feeding of cattle there, but of such wherewith they were fenced, and by which the cattle were affrighted or hindered from breaking into them, which cause of their fear being now removed by the general devastation, they might now enter there, and feed at pleasure, as the next words imply. Or they may be rendered thus, as they are by a late learned interpreter,

that there might not come thither & c., which is mentioned as the reason why they were digged and dressed, that they might be freed from briers and thorns. And so there is only a defect of the Hebrew particle asher , which is frequent, and that not only as it signifies which, but as it is taken finally for that, as Isa 5:11 10:2 , and elsewhere.

It shall be or, even (as this particle is oft rendered) there shall be , to wit, a place; which word is understood, 2Sa 7:1 1Ki 18:12 . Or the words may be thus rendered, and all hills that shall be digged— and thorns, even they or each of them shall be ; the singular being taken collectively, as is very usual.

For the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle all sorts of cattle may fairly enter, and feed there, the fences being broken down, and the owners generally slain, or carried into captivity.

Haydock: Isa 7:16

Good. Being arrived at the age of discretion, Achaz engaged the Assyrians to invade Damascus. Its citizens and four tribes were carried into captivity the year following. Phacee only survived another year, the year of the world 3265. This was a pledge, that what regarded the son of the virgin would also be accomplished. (Calmet) ---

Land of the enemy. (Calmet) (4 Kings xvi.) (Menochius)

Haydock: Isa 7:17

Assyrians. His aid shall prove the greatest scourge, (2 Paralipomenon xxviii. 20.) while the Idumeans and Philistines shall also ravage the country. (2 Paralipomenon xxviii. 17.) Achaz has vainly trusted in man.

Haydock: Isa 7:18

Of Egypt. The Idumeans, &c., dwell on the borders, chap. v. 26. Yet many explain this of the victories of Nabuchodonosor and Nechas.

Haydock: Isa 7:20

Razor. Or cut off with scissors all the hair, as was done with lepers, (Leviticus xiv. 9.) and Levites, Numbers viii. 7. The country shall be pillaged, and all shall be in mourning. (Calmet) ---

The men shall be despised as no better than women and cowards. (St. Jerome) (Theodoret) ---

Hired. With large sums. (Calmet)

Haydock: Isa 7:22

Land. Pastures shall be so large, (Menochius) though uncultivated, the greatest part of the inhabitants being removed.

Haydock: Isa 7:23

Pieces. Sicles. This was the price of the best vineyards, Canticle of Canticles viii. 2. (Calmet) ---

Now people may hunt in them. (Haydock) ---

The subjects of Achaz were much reduced. (Calmet)

Haydock: Isa 7:24

Thither. The hedges shall be rooted up (Haydock) or neglected, so that cattle may graze. (Menochius) ---

Two sorts of mountains are specified; some for vineyards, and others for pasture. (Calmet)

Gill: Isa 7:16

For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,.... This may be understood of Isaiah's child, Shearjashub, he had along with him, he was bid to take with him; and who therefore must be supposed to bear some part, or answer some end or other, in this prophecy; which it is very probable may be this, viz. to assure Ahaz and the house of David that the land which was abhorred by them should be forsaken of both its kings, before the child that was with him was grown to years of discretion; though it may be understood of any child, and so of the Messiah; and the sense be, that before any child, or new born babe, such an one as is promised, Isa 7:14, arrives to years of discretion, even in the space of a few years, this remarkable deliverance should be wrought, and the Jews freed from all fears of being destroyed by these princes:

the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings; meaning not the land of Judea, now distressed by them, which they should leave; for that could not be said to be abhorred by Ahaz, or the house of David; but the land of Israel and Syria, called one land, because of the confederacy between the kings of them, Rezin and Remaliah's son, which Ahaz and his nobles abhorred, because of their joining together against them; and so it was, that in a very little time both these kings were cut off; Pekah the son of Remaliah was slain by Hoshea the son of Elah, who reigned in his stead, 2Ki 15:30 and Rezin was slain by the king of Assyria, 2Ki 16:9.

Gill: Isa 7:17

The Lord shall bring upon thee,.... These words are directed to Ahaz; and show, that though he and his kingdom would be safe from the two kings that conspired against him, yet evils should come upon him from another quarter, even from the Assyrians he sent to for help, and in whom he trusted; in which the Lord himself would have a hand, and permit them in his providence, in order to chastise him for his unbelief, stubbornness, and ingratitude in refusing the sign offered him, and for his other sins; and the calamities threatened began in his time; and therefore it is said, "upon thee"; for Tilgathpilneser, king of Assyria, to whom he sent for help, instead of helping and strengthening him, distressed him, 2Ch 28:20,

and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house; so in the reign of his son Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the land of Judah, took all its fenced cities, excepting Jerusalem, and came up even to that, 2Ki 18:13 and in the times of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem, and destroyed it, and carried the people of Judah captive, 2Ki 25:1 and these are the evil days, the days of affliction and adversity, here threatened:

days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah: meaning the revolt of the ten tribes from the house of David, in the times of Rehoboam, 1Ki 12:16 which was a day of great adversity, a great affliction to the house of Judah; and there had been several evil days since, and that very lately; as when the king of Syria came into the land, and carried away great multitudes captives to Damascus; and when Pekah, king of Israel, slew in Judah, on one day, a hundred and twenty thousand valiant men, and carried captive two hundred thousand women, sons and daughters, with a great spoil, 2Ch 28:5 and yet these were not to be compared with the calamitous times yet to come:

even the king of Assyria; or "with the king of Assyria", as the Vulgate Latin version renders it; rather the meaning is, that those days of trouble should come by the king of Assyria ⁱ, as they did. The Septuagint version renders it, "from the day that Ephraim took away from Judah the king of the Assyrians"; and the Syriac and Arabic versions, just the reverse, "from the day that the king of the Assyrians", or "Assyria, carried away Ephraim from Judea"; neither of them right.

Gill: Isa 7:18

And it shall come to pass in that day,.... the time when those evil days before spoken of should take place:

that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt; or flies, as the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions render it; the Egyptians, so called because their country abounded with flies; and because of the multitude of their armies, and the swiftness of their march; this seems to have had its accomplishment when Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt slew Josiah, put his son Jehoahaz, that reigned after him, in bands, placed Eliakim his brother in his stead, and made the land of Judah tributary to him, 2Ki 23:29 though some think either the Edomites or Philistines, that bordered on Egypt, are meant; who in Ahaz's time invaded Judah, and brought it low, 2Ch 28:17 or else the Ethiopians, that inhabited on the furthermost borders of Egypt, and the rivers of it; who either came up separately against Judah, or served under Nebuchadnezzar; see Isa 18:1,

and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria; the Assyrian army, so called because the country abounded with bees; and because of the number of their armies, their military order and discipline, and their hurtful and mischievous nature. The Targum paraphrases the whole thus,

"and it shall be at that time that the Lord shall call to a people, bands of armies, of mighty men, who are numerous as flies, and shall bring them from the ends of the land of Egypt; and to mighty armies, who are powerful as bees, and shall bring them from the uttermost parts of the land of Assyria:''

hissing or whistling for them denotes the ease with which this should be done, and with what swiftness and readiness those numerous and powerful armies should come; and the allusion is to the calling of bees out of their hives into the fields, and from thence into their hives again, by tinkling of brass, or by some musical sound, in one way or another.

Gill: Isa 7:19

And they shall come,.... The Egyptian and Assyrian armies, when the Lord calls for them in his providence, and his time is come to make use of them as a scourge to his people:

and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys: made so by war; this is said in allusion to flies and bees resting on trees and flowers; and signifies that these armies, after long and tedious marches, should all of them, without being diminished by the way, enter the land of Judea, fill all places, and take up their abode there for a while:

and in the holes of the rocks. Kimchi thinks that the former phrase designs cities in valleys, and this fortified cities which are upon rocks:

and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes; in allusion to flies and bees. Kimchi interprets this of unwalled towns and villages. The Targum of the whole verse is,

"and they shall all of them come and dwell in the streets of the cities, and in the clifts of the rocks, and in all deserts full of sedges, and in all houses of praise.''

The sense is, that they should be in all cities, towns, and villages, whether fortified or not, and in all houses of high and low, rich and poor, in cottages and in palaces; there would be no place free from them, nor no escaping out of their hands.

Gill: Isa 7:20

In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired,.... Meaning the Assyrian monarch, whom he would use as an instrument in his hand to spoil and cut off the people of the Jews; who is compared to a "razor" for sharpness; and for the thorough work, and utter ruin and destruction, he should be the means of; and called a "hired" one, either in reference to the present Ahaz sent to the king of Assyria, by which he prevailed upon him to come and help him against the kings of Syria and Israel, 2Ki 16:7 or to a reward given by the Lord to Nebuchadnezzar for the service in which he employed him, see Eze 29:18,

namely, by them beyond the river; not Nile, but Euphrates; even the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians, who lived on the other side that river; which, with what follows, explains the simile of the razor:

by the king of Assyria; who ruled over those beyond the river:

the head, and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard; signifying that as a razor cuts off the hair entirely where it is applied, and leaves nothing behind, whether of the head, beard, or feet, or privy parts, which are meant by the latter; so the king of Assyria should carry all clean off captive out of the land of Judea; king, princes, nobles, and common people; those of the highest, and of the middling, and of the lowest class. The Targum is,

"in that time the Lord shall slay them as one is slain by a sharp sword, by clubs, and by saws, by those beyond the river, and by the king of Assyria; the king, and his army, and even his rulers, together shall he destroy.''

So Jarchi explains it. Several of the Jewish writers, as Aben Ezra, Abarbinel, and Kimchi ^k, explain this of the Angel of the Lord destroying Sennacherib's army, when before Jerusalem, in Hezekiah's time; so the latter interprets it: "the head"; the heads of his armies: "the hair of the feet"; the multitude of the people: "the beard"; the king, who died, not in the camp, but was killed by his sons in his own land; but this is not a prophecy of the destruction of the Assyrian army, but of the Jewish people by it; and the whole denotes the mean and low condition, the state of slavery and bondage, the Jews should be brought into; of which the shaving of the hair is the symbol; it was usual to shave the head and hair of such as were taken captive, as a sign of reproach and servitude; see 2Sa 10:4 ^l.

Gill: Isa 7:21

And it shall come to pass in that day,.... Not in the days of Hezekiah, after the destruction of Sennacherib's army, when there followed great fruitfulness and plenty, Isa 37:30 as Kimchi and Jarchi interpret it; but in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, after the destruction of Jerusalem, when some poor men were left in the land to till it, Jer 39:10 for of these, and not of rich men, are the following words to be understood:

that a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep; this seems to denote both the scarcity of men and cattle, through the ravages of the army of the Chaldeans; that there should not be large herds and flocks, only a single cow, and two or three sheep; and yet men should be so few, and families so thin, that these would be sufficient to support them comfortably.

Gill: Isa 7:22

And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give,.... The cow and the two sheep, having large pastures, and few cattle to feed upon them, those few would give such abundance of milk, that the owner of them would make butter of it, and live upon it, having no occasion to eat milk; and there being few or none to sell it to:

he shall eat butter; the milk producing a sufficient quantity of it for himself and his family:

for butter and honey shall everyone eat that is left in the land: signifying that though they would be few, they would enjoy a plenty of such sort of food as their small flocks and herds would furnish them with, and the bees produce. The Targum and Jarchi interpret this of the righteous that shall be left in the land; but it is rather to be extended unto all, righteous and unrighteous.

Gill: Isa 7:23

And it shall come to pass in that day; that every place shall be,.... Barren and unfruitful, for want of men to till the ground:

where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings; which were so good, as to be sold or let out for so many silver shekels ^m; or the fruit of them came to such a price; see Son 8:11,

it shall even be for briers and thorns; for want of persons to stock the ground and cultivate it.

Gill: Isa 7:24

With arrows and with bows shall men come thither,.... For fear of wild beasts, serpents, and scorpions, as Jarchi; or in order to hunt them, as others; or because of thieves and robbers, as Aben Ezra:

because all the land shall become briers and thorns; among which such creatures, and such sort of men, would hide themselves.

Gill: Isa 7:25

And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock,.... Which could not be ploughed with a plough, but used to be dug with a mattock or spade, and then sowed with corn:

there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns; where thorns and briers used not to grow, and where there was no fear or danger of being overrun with them, as the vineyards in the valleys and champaign country; yet those places should become desolate in another way; or rather, there shall be now no fences made of briers and thorns, which deter cattle from entering into fields and vineyards thus fenced:

but it shall be for the setting forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle; there being no fence of briers and thorns to keep them out, cattle both of the greater and lesser sort should get into the corn, and feed upon it, and make such places desolate, where much pains were taken to cultivate them. The Targum is,

"it shall be for a place of lying down of oxen, and for a place of dwelling of flocks of sheep;''

not for pastures, but for folds for them; though the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, suggest these places should become pastures; and therefore some understand this as a prophecy of a change in the country for the better, and of the great fruitfulness of it after the Jews' return from the Babylonish captivity.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Isa 7:16

¹ tn Heb “for, because.” The particle introduces the entire following context (vv. 16-25), which explains why Immanuel will be an appropriate name for the child, why he will eat sour milk and honey, and why experiencing such a diet will contribute to his moral development.

² sn Since “two kings” are referred to later in the verse, the “land” must here refer to Syria-Israel.

³ tn Heb “the land will be abandoned, which you fear because of its two kings.” After the verb קוּץ (quts, “loathe, dread”) the phrase מִפְּנֵי (mipney, “from before”) introduces the cause of loathing/dread (see Gen 27:46; Exod 1:12; Num 22:3).

NET Notes: Isa 7:17

¹ tn Heb “days” (so KJV, NAB); NASB, NRSV “such days.”

² sn Initially the prophecy appears to be a message of salvation. Immanuel seems to have a positive ring to it, sour milk and honey elsewhere symbolize prosperity and blessing (see Deut 32:13-14; Job 20:17), verse 16 announces the defeat of Judah’s enemies, and verse 17a could be taken as predicting a return to the glorious days of David and Solomon. However, the message turns sour in verses 17b-25. God will be with his people in judgment, as well as salvation. The curds and honey will be signs of deprivation, not prosperity, the relief announced in verse 16 will be short-lived, and the new era will be characterized by unprecedented humiliation, not a return to glory. Because of Ahaz’s refusal to trust the Lord, potential blessing would be transformed into a curse, just as Isaiah turns an apparent prophecy of salvation into a message of judgment. Because the words “the king of Assyria” are rather awkwardly tacked on to the end of the sentence, some regard them as a later addition. However, the very awkwardness facilitates the prophet’s rhetorical strategy here, as he suddenly turns what sounds like a positive message into a judgment speech. Actually, “the king of Assyria,” stands in apposition to the earlier object “days,” and specifies who the main character of these coming “days” will be.

NET Notes: Isa 7:18

¹ tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV). The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

² sn Swarming flies are irritating; bees are irritating and especially dangerous because of the pain they inflict with their sting (see Deut 1:44; Ps 118:12). The metaphors are well chosen, for the Assyrians (symbolized by the bees) were much more powerful and dangerous than the Egyptians (symbolized by the flies). Nevertheless both would put pressure on Judah, for Egypt wanted Judah as a buffer state against Assyrian aggression, while Assyrian wanted it as a base for operations against Egypt. Following the reference to sour milk and honey, the metaphor is especially apt, for flies are attracted to dairy products and bees can be found in the vicinity of honey.

NET Notes: Isa 7:19

¹ tn Heb “and shall rest” (so KJV, ASV); NASB, NIV, NRSV “and settle.”

² tn The meaning of this word (נַהֲלֹל, nahalol) is uncertain; some understand this as referring to another type of thorn bush. For bibliography, see HALOT 676 s.v. I *נַהֲלֹל.

NET Notes: Isa 7:20

¹ tn Heb “in that day” (so ASV, NASB); KJV “In the same day.”

² tn Heb “the river” (so KJV); NASB “the Euphrates.” The name of the river has been supplied in the present translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “the hair of the feet.” The translation assumes that the word “feet” is used here as a euphemism for the genitals. See BDB 920 s.v. רֶגֶל.

NET Notes: Isa 7:21

¹ tn Heb “in that day.” The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

NET Notes: Isa 7:22

¹ tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated, see note on 2:2.

NET Notes: Isa 7:23

¹ tn Heb “in that day.” The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

² tn Heb “will become” (so NASB); NAB “shall be turned to.”

NET Notes: Isa 7:24

¹ tn Heb “with arrows and a bow.” The more common English idiom is “bow[s] and arrow[s].”

² tn Heb “go” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “go hunting.”

³ tn Heb “will be” (so NASB, NRSV).

NET Notes: Isa 7:25

¹ tn Heb “and all the hills which were hoed with a hoe, you will not go there [for] fear of the thorns and briers.”

² tn Heb “and it will become a pasture for cattle and a trampling place for sheep.”

sn At this point one is able to summarize the content of the “sign” (vv. 14-15) as follows: A young woman known to be present when Isaiah delivered this message to Ahaz (perhaps a member of the royal family or the prophetess mentioned in 8:3) would soon give birth to a boy whom the mother would name Immanuel, “God is with us.” Eventually Immanuel would be forced to eat sour milk and honey, which would enable him to make correct moral decisions. How would this situation come about and how would it constitute a sign? Before this situation developed, the Israelites and Syrians would be defeated. But then the Lord would usher in a period of time unlike any since the division of the kingdom almost 200 years before. The Assyrians would overrun the land, destroy the crops, and force the people to subsist on goats’ milk and honey. At that time, as the people saw Immanuel eating his sour milk and honey, the Davidic family would be forced to acknowledge that God was indeed with them. He was present with them in the Syrian-Israelite crisis, fully capable of rescuing them; but he was also present with them in judgment, disciplining them for their lack of trust. The moral of the story is quite clear: Failure to appropriate God’s promises by faith can turn potential blessing into disciplinary judgment.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:16

For before the ^{( o )} child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings.

^{( o )} Not meaning Christ, but any child: for before a child can come to the years of discretion, the kings of Samaria and Syria will be destroyed.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:17

The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that ^{( p )} Ephraim departed from Judah; [even] the king of ^{( q )} Assyria.

^{( p )} Since the time that the twelve tribes rebelled under Rehoboam.

^{( q )} In whom you have put your trust.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:18

And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] the LORD shall hiss for the ^{( r )} fly that [is] in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that [is] in the land of Assyria.

^{( r )} Meaning, the Egyptians: for since the country is hot and moist, it is full of flies, as Assyria is full of bees.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:19

And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the clefts of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all ^{( s )} bushes.

^{( s )} Signifying that no place will be free from them.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:20

In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, [namely], by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the ^{( t )} feet: and it shall also consume the beard.

^{( t )} That is, that which is from the belly downward meaning that he would destroy both great and small.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:21

And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] a man shall ^{( u )} nourish a young cow, and two sheep;

^{( u )} He who before had a great number of cattle will be content with one cow and two sheep.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:22

And it shall come to pass, for the ^{( x )} abundance of milk [that] they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.

^{( x )} The number of men will be so small that a few beasts will be able to nourish all abundantly.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:24

With arrows and with ^{( y )} bows shall [men] come there; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.

^{( y )} As they who go to seek wild beasts among the bushes.

Geneva Bible: Isa 7:25

And [on] ^{( z )} all hills that shall be dug with the mattock, there shall not come there the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.

^{( z )} The mountains contrary to their will, will be tilled by such as shall flee to them for comfort.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Isa 7:1-25

1 Ahaz, being troubled with fear of Rezin and Pekah, is comforted by Isaiah.

10 Ahaz, having liberty to choose a sign, and refusing it, hath for a sign, Christ promised.

17 His judgment is prophesied to come by Assyria.

MHCC: Isa 7:10-16

Secret disaffection to God is often disguised with the colour of respect to him; and those who are resolved that they will not trust God, yet pretend they will not tempt him. The prophet reproved Ahaz and his court, for the little value they had for Divine revelation. Nothing is more grievous to God than distrust, but the unbelief of man shall not make the promise of God of no effect; the Lord himself shall give a sign. How great soever your distress and danger, of you the Messiah is to be born, and you cannot be destroyed while that blessing is in you. It shall be brought to pass in a glorious manner; and the strongest consolations in time of trouble are derived from Christ, our relation to him, our interest in him, our expectations of him and from him. He would grow up like other children, by the use of the diet of those countries; but he would, unlike other children, uniformly refuse the evil and choose the good. And although his birth would be by the power of the Holy Ghost, yet he should not be fed with angels' food. Then follows a sign of the speedy destruction of the princes, now a terror to Judah. " Before this child," so it may be read; " this child which I have now in my arms," (Shear-jashub, the prophet's own son, Isa 7:3,) shall be three or four years older, these enemies' forces shall be forsaken of both their kings. The prophecy is so solemn, the sign is so marked, as given by God himself after Ahaz rejected the offer, that it must have raised hopes far beyond what the present occasion suggested. And, if the prospect of the coming of the Divine Saviour was a never-failing support to the hopes of ancient believers, what cause have we to be thankful that the Word was made flesh! May we trust in and love Him, and copy his example.

MHCC: Isa 7:17-25

Let those who will not believe the promises of God, expect to hear the alarms of his threatenings; for who can resist or escape his judgments? The Lord shall sweep all away; and whomsoever he employs in any service for him, he will pay. All speaks a sad change of the face of that pleasant land. But what melancholy change is there, which sin will not make with a people? Agriculture would cease. Sorrows of every kind will come upon all who neglect the great salvation. If we remain unfruitful under the means of grace, the Lord will say, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever.

Matthew Henry: Isa 7:10-16

Here, I. God, by the prophet, makes a gracious offer to Ahaz, to confirm the foregoing predictions, and his faith in them, by such sign or miracle as he should choose (Isa 7:10, Isa 7:11): Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; See here the divine faithfulness and veracity. God tells us nothing but what he is able and ready to prove. See his wonderful condescension to the children of men, in that he is so willing to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, Heb 6:17. He considers our frame, and that, living in a world of sense, we are apt to require sensible proofs, which therefore he has favoured us with in sacramental signs and seals. Ahaz was a bad man, yet God is called the Lord his God, because he was a child of Abraham and David, and of the covenants made with them. See how gracious God is even to the evil and unthankful; Ahaz is bidden to choose his sign, as Gideon about the fleece (Jdg 6:37); let him ask for a sign in the air, or earth, or water, for God's power is the same in all.

II. Ahaz rudely refuses this gracious offer, and (which is not mannerly towards any superior) kicks at the courtesy, and puts a slight upon it (Isa 7:12): I will not ask. The true reason why he would not ask for a sign was because, having a dependence upon the Assyrians, their forces, and their gods, for help, he would not thus far be beholden to the God of Israel, or lay himself under obligations to him. He would not ask a sign for the confirming of his faith because he resolved to persist in his unbelief, and would indulge his doubts and distrusts; yet he pretends a pious reason: I will not tempt the Lord; as if it would be a tempting of God to do that which God himself invited and directed him to do. Note, A secret disaffection to God is often disguised with the specious colours of respect to him; and those who are resolved that they will not trust God yet pretend that they will not tempt him.

III. The prophet reproves him and his court, him and the house of David, the whole royal family, for their contempt of prophecy, and the little value they had for divine revelation (Isa 7:13) " Is it a small thing for you to weary men by your oppression and tyranny, with which you make yourselves burdensome and odious to all mankind? But will you weary my God also with the affronts you put upon him?"As the unjust judge that neither feared God nor regarded man, Luk 18:2. You have wearied the Lord with your words, Mal 2:17. Nothing is more grievous to the God of heaven than to be distrusted. " Will you weary my God? Will you suppose him to be tired and unable to help you, or to be weary of doing you good? Whereas the youths may faint and be weary, you may have tired all your friends, the Creator of the ends of the earth faints not, neither is weary. "Isa 40:28-31. Or this: "In affronting the prophets, you think you put a slight only upon men like yourselves, and consider not that you affront God himself, whose messengers they are, and put a slight upon him, who will resent it accordingly."The prophet here calls God his God with a great deal of pleasure: Ahaz would not say, He is my God, though the prophet had invited him to say so (Isa 7:11): The Lord thy God; but Isaiah will say, "He is mine."Note, Whatever others do, we must avouch the Lord for ours and abide by him.

IV. The prophet, in God's name, gives them a sign: "You will not ask a sign, but the unbelief of man shall not make the promise of God of no effect: The Lord himself shall give you a sign (Isa 7:14), a double sign."

1. "A sign in general of his good-will to Israel and to the house of David. You may conclude it that he has mercy in store for you, and that you are not forsaken of your God, how great soever your present distress and danger are; for of your nation, of your family, the Messiah is to be born, and you cannot be destroyed while that blessing is in you, which shall be introduced,"(1.) "In a glorious manner; for, whereas you have been often told that he should be born among you, I am now further to tell you that he shall be born of a virgin, which will signify both the divine power and the divine purity with which he shall be brought into the world, - that he shall be a extraordinary person, for he shall not be born by ordinary generation, - and that he shall be a holy thing, not stained with the common pollutions of the human nature, therefore incontestably fit to have the throne of his father David given him."Now this, though it was to be accomplished above 500 years after, was a most encouraging sign to the house of David (and to them, under that title, this prophecy is directed, Isa 7:13) and an assurance that God would not cast them off. Ephraim did indeed envy Judah (Isa 11:13) and sought the ruin of that kingdom, but could not prevail; for the sceptre should never depart from Judah till the coming of Shiloh, Gen 49:10. Those whom God designs for the great salvation may take that for a sign to them that they shall not be swallowed up by any trouble they meet with in the way. (2.) The Messiah shall be introduced on a glorious errand, wrapped up in his glorious name: They shall call his name Immanuel - God with us, God in our nature, God at peace with us, in covenant with us. This was fulfilled in their calling him Jesus - a Saviour (Mat 1:21-25), for, if he had not been Immanuel - God with us, he could not have been Jesus - a Saviour. Now this was a further sign of God's favour to the house of David and the tribe of Judah; for he that intended to work this great salvation among them no doubt would work out for them all those other salvations which were to be the types and figures of this, and as it were preludes to this. "Here is a sign for you, not in the depth nor in the height, but in the prophecy, in the promise, in the covenant made with David, which you are no strangers to. The promised seed shall be Immanuel, God with us; let that word comfort you (Isa 8:10), that God is with us, and (v. 8) that your land is Immanuel's land. Let not the heart of the house of David be moved thus (Isa 7:2), nor let Judah fear the setting up of the son of Tabeal (Isa 7:6), for nothing can cut off the entail on the Son of David that shall be Immanuel."Note, The strongest consolations, in time of trouble, are those which are borrowed from Christ, our relation to him, our interest in him, and our expectations of him and from him. Of this child it is further foretold (Isa 7:15) that though he shall not be born like other children, but of a virgin, yet he shall be really and truly man, and shall be nursed and brought up like other children: Butter and honey shall he eat, as other children do, particularly the children of that land which flowed with milk and honey. Though he be conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, yet he shall not therefore be fed with angels' food, but, as it becomes him, shall be in all things made like unto his brethren, Heb 2:17. Nor shall he, though born thus by extraordinary generation, be a man immediately, but, as other children, shall advance gradually through the several states of infancy, childhood, and youth, to that of manhood, and growing in wisdom and stature, shall at length wax strong in spirit, and come to maturity, so as to know how to refuse the evil and choose the good. See Luk 2:40, Luk 2:52. Note, Children are fed when they are little that they may be taught and instructed when they have grown up; they have their maintenance in order to their education.

2. Here is another sign in particular of the speedy destruction of these potent princes that were now a terror to Judah, Isa 7:16. "Before this child (so it should be read), this child which I have now in my arms"(he means not Immanuel, but Shear-jashub his own son, whom he was ordered to take with him for a sign, Isa 7:3), "before this child shall know how to refuse the evil and choose the good "(and those who saw what his present stature and forwardness were would easily conjecture how long that would be), "before this child be three or four years older, the land that thou abhorrest, these confederate forces of Israelites and Syrians, which thou hast such an enmity to and standest in such dread of, shall be forsaken of both their kings, both Pekah and Rezin,"who were in so close an alliance that they seemed as if they were the kings of but one kingdom. This was fully accomplished; for within two or three years after this, Hoshea conspired against Pekah, and slew him (2Ki 15:30), and, before that, the king of Assyria took Damascus, and slew Rezin, 2Ki 16:9. Nay, there was a present event, which happened immediately, and when this child carried the prediction of in his name, which was a pledge and earnest of this future event. Shear-jashub signifies The remnant shall return, which doubtless points at the wonderful return of those 200,000 captives whom Pekah and Rezin had carried away, who were brought back, not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts. Read the story, 2Ch 28:8-15. The prophetical naming of this child having thus had its accomplishment, no doubt this, which was further added concerning him, should have its accomplishment likewise, that Syria and Israel should be deprived of both their kings. One mercy from God encourages us to hope for another, if it engages us to prepare for another.

Matthew Henry: Isa 7:17-25

After the comfortable promises made to Ahaz as a branch of the house of David, here follow terrible threatenings against him, as a degenerate branch of that house; for though the loving-kindness of God shall not be utterly taken away, for the sake of David and the covenant made with him, yet his iniquity shall be chastened with the rod, and his sin with stripes. Let those that will not mix faith with the promises of God expect to hear the alarms of his threatenings.

I. The judgment threatened is very great, Isa 7:17. It is very great, for it is general; it shall be brought upon the prince himself (high as he is, he shall not be out of the reach of it), and upon the people, the whole body of the nation, and upon the royal family, upon all thy father's house; it shall be a judgment entailed on posterity, and shall go along with the royal blood. It is very great, for it shall be unprecedented - days that have not come; so dark, so gloomy, so melancholy, as never were the like since the revolt of the ten tribes, when Ephraim departed from Judah, which was indeed a sad time to the house of David. Note, The longer men continue in sin the sorer punishments they have reason to expect. It is the Lord that will bring these days upon them, for our times are in his hand, and who can resist or escape the judgments he brings?

II. The enemy that should be employed as the instrument of this judgment is the king of Assyria. Ahaz reposed great confidence in that prince for help against the confederate powers of Israel and Syria, and minded the less what God said to him by his prophet for his encouragement because he built much upon his interest in the king of Assyria, and had meanly promised to be his servant if he would send him some succours; he had also, made him a present of gold and silver, for which he drained the treasures both of church and state, 2Ki 16:7, 2Ki 16:8. Now God threatens that that king of Assyria whom he made his stay instead of God should become a scourge to him. He was so speedily; for, when he came to him, he distressed him, but strengthened him not (2Ch 28:20), the reed not only broke under him, but ran into his hand, and pierced it, and thenceforward the kings of Assyria were, for a long time, grieving thorns to Judah, and gave them a great deal of trouble. Note, The creature that we make our hope commonly proves our hurt. The king of Assyria, not long after this, made himself master of the ten tribes, carried them captive, and laid their country waste, so as fully to answer the prediction here; and perhaps it may refer to that, as an explication of Isa 7:8, where it is foretold that Ephraim shall be broken, that it shall not be a people; and it is easy to suppose that the prophet (at Isa 7:17) turns his speech to the king of Israel, denouncing God's judgments against him for invading Judah. But the expositors universally understand it of Ahaz and his kingdom. Now observe, 1. Summons given to the invaders (Isa 7:18): The Lord shall whistle for the fly and the bee. See Isa 5:26. Enemies that seem as contemptible as a fly or a bee, and are as easily crushed, shall yet, when God pleases, do his work as effectually as lions and young lions. Though they are as far distant from one another as the rivers of Egypt and the land of Assyria, yet they shall punctually meet to join in this work when God commands their attendance; for, when God has work to do, he will not be at a loss for instruments to do it with. 2. Possession taken by them, Isa 7:19. It should seem as if the country were in no condition to make resistance. They find no difficulties in forcing their way, but come and rest all of them in the desolate valleys, which the inhabitants had deserted upon the first alarm, and left them a cheap and easy prey to the invaders. They shall come and rest in the low grounds like swarms of flies and bees, and shall render themselves impregnable by taking shelter in the holes of the rocks, as bees often do, and showing themselves formidable by appearing openly upon all thorns and all bushes; so generally shall the land be overspread with them. These bees shall knit upon the thorns and bushes, and there rest undisturbed. 3. Great desolations made, and the country generally depopulated (Isa 7:20): The Lord shall shave the hair of the head, and beard, and feet; he shall sweep all away, as the leper, when he was cleansed, shaved off all his hair, Lev 14:8, Lev 14:9. This is done with a razor which is hired, either which God has hired (as if he had none of his own; but what he hires, and whom he employs in any service for him, he will pay for. See Eze 29:18, Eze 29:19), or which Ahaz has hired for his assistance. God will make that to be an instrument of his destruction which he hired into his service. Note, Many are beaten with that arm of flesh which they trusted to rather than to the arm of the Lord, and which they were at a great expense upon, when by faith and prayer they might have found cheap and easy succour in God. 4. The consequences of this general depopulation. (1.) The flocks of cattle shall be all destroyed, so that a man who had herds and flocks in abundance shall be stripped of them all by the enemy, and shall with much ado save for his own use a young cow and two sheep - a poor stock (Isa 7:21), yet he shall think himself happy in having any left. (2.) The few cattle that are left shall have such a large compass of ground to feed in that they shall give abundance of milk, and very good milk, such as shall produce butter enough, Isa 7:22. There shall also be such want of men that the milk of one cow and two sheep shall serve a whole family, which used to keep abundance of servants and consume a great deal, but is now reduced. (3.) The breed of cattle shall be destroyed; so that those who used to eat flesh ( as the Jews commonly did) shall be necessitated to confine themselves to butter and honey, for there shall be no flesh for them; and the country shall be so depopulated that there shall be butter and honey enough for the few that are left in it. (4.) Good land, that used to be let well, shall be all overrun with briers and thorns (Isa 7:23); where there used to be a thousand vines planted, for which the tenants used to pay a thousand shekels, or pieces of silver, yearly rent, there shall be nothing now but briers and thorns, no profit either for landlord or tenant, all being laid waste by the army of the invaders. Note, God can soon turn a fruitful land into barrenness; and it is just with him to turn vines into briers if we, instead of bringing forth grapes to him, bring forth wild grapes, Isa 5:4. (5.) The implements of husbandry shall be turned into instruments of war, Isa 7:24. The whole land having become briers and thorns, the grounds that men used to come to with sickles and pruning-hooks to gather in the fruits they shall now come to with arrows and bows, to hunt for wild beasts in the thickets, or to defend themselves from the robbers that lurk in the bushes, seeking for prey, or to kill the serpents and venomous beasts that are hid there. This denotes a very sad change of the face of that pleasant land. But what melancholy change is there which sin will not make with a people? (6.) Where briers and thorns were wont to be of use and to do good service, even in the hedges, for the defence of the enclosed grounds, they shall be plucked up, and all laid in common. There shall be briers and thorns in abundance where they should not be, but none where they should be, Isa 7:25. The hills that shall be digged with the mattock, for special use, from which the cattle used to be kept off with the fear of briers and thorns, shall now be thrown open, the hedges broken down for the boar out of the wood to waste it, Psa 80:12, Psa 80:13. It shall be left at large for oxen to run in and less cattle. See the effect of sin and the curse; it has made the earth a forest of thorns and thistles, except as it is forced into some order by the constant care and labour of man. And see what folly it is to set our hearts upon possessions of lands, be they every so fruitful, ever so pleasant; if they lie ever so little neglected and uncultivated, or if they be abused by a wasteful careless heir or tenant, or the country be laid waste by war, they will soon become frightful deserts. Heaven is a paradise not subject to such changes.

Keil-Delitzsch: Isa 7:16-17

"For before the boy shall understand to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land will be desolate, of whose two kings thou art afraid. Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days such as have not come since the day when Ephraim broke away from Judah - the king of Asshur." The land of the two kings, Syria and Israel, was first of all laid waste by the Assyrians, whom Ahaz called to his assistance. Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus and a portion of the kingdom of Israel, and led a large part of the inhabitants of the two countries into captivity (2Ki 15:29; 2Ki 16:9). Judah was then also laid waste by the Assyrians, as a punishment for having refused the help of Jehovah, and preferred the help of man. Days of adversity would come upon the royal house and people of Judah, such as ( 'asher , quales , as in Exo 10:6) had not come upon them since the calamitous day ( l'miyyōm , inde a die ; in other places we find l'min - hayyom , Exo 9:18; Deu 4:32; Deu 9:7, etc.) of the falling away of the ten tribes. The appeal to Asshur laid the foundation for the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, quite as much as for that of the kingdom of Israel. Ahaz became the tributary vassal of the king of Assyria in consequence; and although Hezekiah was set free from Asshur through the miraculous assistance of Jehovah, what Nebuchadnezzar afterwards performed was only the accomplishment of the frustrated attempt of Sennacherib. It is with piercing force that the words "the king of Assyria"( 'eth melek Asshur ) are introduced at the close of the two verses. The particle 'eth is used frequently where an indefinite object is followed by the more precise and definite one (Gen 6:10; Gen 26:34). The point of the v. would be broken by eliminating the words as a gloss, as Knobel proposes. The very king to whom Ahaz had appealed in his terror, would bring Judah to the brink of destruction. The absence of any link of connection between Isa 7:16 and Isa 7:17 is also very effective. The hopes raised in the mind of Ahaz by Isa 7:16 are suddenly turned into bitter disappointment. In the face of such catastrophes as these, Isaiah predicts the birth of Immanuel. His eating only thickened milk and honey, at a time when he knew very well what was good and what was not, would arise from the desolation of the whole of the ancient territory of the Davidic kingdom that had preceded the riper years of his youth, when he would certainly have chosen other kinds of food, if they could possibly have been found. Consequently the birth of Immanuel apparently falls between the time then present and the Assyrian calamities, and his earliest childhood appears to run parallel to the Assyrian oppression. In any case, their consequences would be still felt at the time of his riper youth. In what way the truth of the prophecy was maintained notwithstanding, we shall see presently. What follows in Isa 7:18-25, is only a further expansion of Isa 7:17. The promising side of the "sign"remains in the background, because this was not for Ahaz. When Ewald expresses the opinion that a promising strophe has fallen out after Isa 7:17, he completely mistakes the circumstances under which the prophet uttered these predictions. In the presence of Ahaz he must keep silence as to the promises. But he pours out with all the greater fluency his threatening of judgment.

Keil-Delitzsch: Isa 7:18-19

"And it comes to pass in that day, Jehovah will hiss for the fly which is at the end of the Nile-arms of Egypt, and the bees that are in the land of Asshur; and they come and settle all of them in the valleys of the slopes, and in the clefts of the rocks, and in all the thorn-hedges, and upon all grass-plats." The prophet has already stated, in Isa 5:26, that Jehovah would hiss for distant nations; and how he is able to describe them by name. The Egyptian nation, with its vast and unparalleled numbers, is compared to the swarming fly; and the Assyrian nation, with its love of war and conquest, to the stinging bee which is so hard to keep off (Deu 1:44; Psa 118:12). The emblems also correspond to the nature of the two countries: the fly to slimy Egypt with its swarms of insects (see Isa 18:1),

(Note: Egypt abounds in gnats, etc., more especially in flies ( m uscariae ), including a species of small fly ( nemâth ), which is a great plague to men throughout all the country of the Nile (see Hartmann, Natur-geschichtlich-medicinische Skizze der Nilländer , 1865, pp. 204- 5).)

and the bee to the more mountainous and woody Assyria, where the keeping of bees is still one of the principal branches of trade. יאר , pl. יארים , is an Egyptian name ( yaro , with the article phiaro , pl. yarōu ) for the Nile and its several arms. The end of the Nile-arms of Egypt, from a Palestinian point of view, was the extreme corner of the land. The military force of Egypt would march out of the whole compass of the land, and meet the Assyrian force in the Holy Land; and both together would cover the land in such a way that the valleys of steep precipitous heights (nachalee habbattoth), and clefts of the rocks ( nekikē hasselâ‛im ), and all the thorn-hedges (nâ‛azūzı̄m ) and pastures ( nahalolim , from nihēl , to lead to pasture), would be covered with these swarms. The fact that just such places are named, as afforded a suitable shelter and abundance of food for flies and bees, is a filling up of the figure in simple truthfulness to nature. And if we look at the historical fulfilment, it does not answer even in this respect to the actual letter of the prophecy; for in the time of Hezekiah no collision really took place between the Assyrian and Egyptian forces; and it was not till the days of Josiah that a collision took place between the Chaldean and Egyptian powers in the eventful battle fought between Pharaoh-Necho and Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish (Circesium), which decided the fate of Judah. That the spirit of prophecy points to this eventful occurrence is evident from Isa 7:20, where no further allusion is made to Egypt, because of its having succumbed to the imperial power of Eastern Asia.

Keil-Delitzsch: Isa 7:20

"In that day will the Lord shave with a razor, the thing for hire on the shore of the river, with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet; and even the beard it will take away." Knobel takes the hair to be a figurative representation of the produce of the land; but the only thing which at all favours the idea that the flora is ever regarded by biblical writers as the hairy covering of the soil, is the use of the term nâzir as the name of an uncultivated vine left to itself (Lev 25:5). The nation of Judah is regarded here, as in Isa 1:6, as a man stript naked, and not only with all the hair of his head and feet shaved off ( raglaim , a euphemism), but what was regarded as the most shameful of all, with the hair of his beard shaved off as well. To this end the Almighty would make use of a razor, which is more distinctly defined as hired on the shore of the Euphrates ( Conductitia in litoribus Euphratis : nâhâr stands here for hannâhâr ), and still more precisely as the king of Asshur (the latter is again pronounced a gloss by Knobel and others). "The thing for hire:" hassecı̄râh might be an abstract term (hiring, Conductio ), but it may also be the feminine of sâcı̄r , which indicates an emphatic advance from the indefinite to the more definite; in the sense of "with a razor, namely, that which was standing ready to be hired in the lands on both sides of the Euphrates, the king of Assyria."In hassecı̄râh (the thing for hire) there was involved the bitterest sarcasm for Ahaz. The sharp knife, which it had hired for the deliverance of Judah, was hired by the Lord, to shave Judah most thoroughly, and in the most disgraceful manner. Thus shaved, Judah would be a depopulated and desert land, in which men would no longer live by growing corn and vines, or by trade and commerce, but by grazing alone.

Keil-Delitzsch: Isa 7:21-22

"And it will come to pass in that day, that a man will keep a small cow and a couple of sheep; and it comes to pass, for the abundance of the milk they give he will eat cream: for butter and honey will every one eat that is left within the land." The former prosperity would be reduced to the most miserable housekeeping. One man would keep a milch cow and two head of sheep (or goats) alive with the greatest care, the strongest and finest full-grown cattle having fallen into the hands of the foe ( היּה , like החיה in other places: shtē , not shnē , because two female sheep or goats are meant). But this would be quite enough, for there would be only a few men left in the land; and as all the land would be pasture, the small number of animals would yield milk in abundance. Bread and wine would be unattainable. Whoever had escaped the Assyrian razor, would eat thickened milk and honey, that and nothing but that, without variation, ad nauseam. The reason for this would be, that the hills, which at other times were full of vines and corn-fields, would be overgrown with briers.

Keil-Delitzsch: Isa 7:23-25

The prophet repeats this three times in Isa 7:23-25 : "And it will come to pass in that day, every place, where a thousand vines stood at a thousand silverlings, will have become thorns and thistles. With arrows and with bows will men go, for the whole land will have become thorns and thistles. And all the hills that were accustomed to be hoed with the hoe, thou wilt not go to them for fear of thorns and thistles; and it has become a gathering-place for oxen, and a treading-place for sheep." The "thousand silverlings"( 'eleph ceseph , i.e., a thousand shekels of silver) recall to mind Son 8:11, though there it is the value of the yearly produce, whereas here the thousand shekels are the value of a thousand vines, the sign of a peculiarly valuable piece of a vineyard. At the present time they reckon the worth of a vineyard in Lebanon and Syria according to the value of the separate vines, and generally take the vines at one piastre (from 2nd to 3rd) each; just as in Germany a Johannisberg vine is reckoned at a ducat. Every piece of ground, where such valuable vines were standing, would have fallen a prey to the briers. People would go there with bow and arrow, because the whole land had become thorns and thistles (see at Isa 5:12 ), and therefore wild animals had made their homes there. And thou (the prophet addresses the countryman thus) comest not to all the hills, which were formerly cultivated in the most careful manner; thou comest not thither to make them arable again, because thorns and thistles deter thee from reclaiming such a fallow. They would therefore give the oxen freedom to rove where they would, and let sheep and goats tread down whatever grew there. The description is intentionally thoroughly tautological and pleonastic, heavy and slow in movement. The writer's intention is to produce the impression of a waste heath, or tedious monotony. Hence the repetitions of hâyâh and yihyeh . Observe how great the variations are in the use of the future and perfect, and how the meaning is always determined by the context. In Isa 7:21, Isa 7:22, the futures have a really future sense; in Isa 7:23 the first and third yihyeh signify "will have become"( factus erit omnis locus ), and the second "was"( erat ); in Isa 7:24 יבוא means "will come"( veniet ), and tihyeh "will have become"( facta erit terra ); in Isa 7:25 we must render yē‛âdērūn , sarciebantur (they used to be hoed). And in Isa 7:21, Isa 7:22, and Isa 7:23, hâyâh is equivalent to fiet (it will become); whilst in Isa 7:25 it means factum est (it has become). Looked at from a western point of view, therefore, the future tense is sometimes a simple future, sometimes a future perfect, and sometimes an imperfect or synchronistic preterite; and the perfect sometimes a prophetic preterite, sometimes an actual preterite, but the sphere of an ideal past, or what is the same thing, of a predicted future.

This ends Isaiah's address to king Ahaz. He does not expressly say when Immanuel is to be born, but only what will take place before he has reached the riper age of boyhood - namely, first, the devastation of Israel and Syria, and then the devastation of Judah itself, by the Assyrians. From the fact that the prophet says no more than this, we may see that his spirit and his tongue were under the direction of the Spirit of God, who does not descend within the historical and temporal range of vision, without at the same time remaining exalted above it. On the other hand, however, we may see from what he says, that the prophecy has its human side as well. When Isaiah speaks of Immanuel as eating thickened milk and honey, like all who survived the Assyrian troubles in the Holy Land; he evidently looks upon and thinks of the childhood of Immanuel as connected with the time of the Assyrian calamities. And it was in such a perspective combination of events lying far apart, that the complex character of prophecy consisted. The reason for this complex character was a double one, viz., the human limits associated with the prophet's telescopic view of distant times, and the pedagogical wisdom of God, in accordance with which He entered into these limits instead of removing them. If, therefore, we adhere to the letter of prophecy, we may easily throw doubt upon its veracity; but if we look at the substance of the prophecy, we soon find that the complex character by no means invalidates its truth. For the things which the prophet saw in combination were essentially connected, even though chronologically separated. When, for example, in the case before us (chapters 7-12), Isaiah saw Asshur only, standing out as the imperial kingdom; this was so far true, that the four imperial kingdoms from the Babylonian to the Roman were really nothing more than the full development of the commencement made in Assyria. And when he spoke of the son of the virgin (chapter 7) as growing up in the midst of the Assyrian oppressions; this also was so far true, that Jesus was really born at a time when the Holy Land, deprived of its previous abundance, was under the dominion of the imperial power, and in a condition whose primary cause was to be traced to the unbelief of Ahaz. Moreover, He who became flesh in the fulness of time, did really lead an ideal life in the Old Testament history. He was in the midst of it in a pre-existent presence, moving on towards the covenant goal. The fact that the house and nation of David did not perish in the Assyrian calamities, was actually to be attributed, as chapter 8 presupposes, to His real though not His bodily presence. In this way the apparent discrepancy between the prophecy and the history of the fulfilment may be solved. We do not require the solution proposed by Vitringa, and recently appropriate by Haneberg - namely, that the prophet takes the stages of the Messiah's life out of the distant future, to make them the measure of events about to take place in the immediate future; nor that of Bengel, Schegg, Schmieder, and others - namely, that the sign consisted in an event belonging to the immediate future, which pointed typically to the birth of the true Immanuel; nor that of Hofmann, who regards the words of the prophet as an emblematical prediction of the rise of a new Israel, which would come to the possession of spiritual intelligence in the midst of troublous times, occasioned by the want of intelligence in the Israel of his own time. The prophecy, as will be more fully confirmed as we proceed, is directly Messianic; it is a divine prophecy within human limits.

Constable: Isa 7:1--39:8

III. Israel's crisis of faith chs. 7--39

This long section of the book deals with Israel's major decision in Isaiah's day. Would she trust in Yahweh or in other nations? The decision was a matter of faith; who is more trustworthy, God or strong people? God promised that trust in the nations would result in destruction (ch. 34) but trust in Him would bring abundance (ch. 35). Israel's decision would also determine whether she had a message for the nations or not and whether she would fulfill her mission to the nations or not. This decision is, of course, one that the people of God of all ages continually face.

Constable: Isa 7:1--12:6

A. The choice between trusting God or Assyria chs. 7-12

This section of Isaiah provides a historical introduction to the theological problem described above. King Ahaz had to make this decision of faith because he faced the threat of military invasion. Though warned by the prophet, the king made the wrong decision and experienced the bitter consequences. All four subdivisions of this section focus on Assyria and deal with the implications of trust in her rather than God. As Isaiah had faced his moment of decision (ch. 6), so King Ahaz did now. But with the bad news of Ahaz's apostasy comes the assurance that God would raise up a faithful Anointed One in the future.

Constable: Isa 7:1--9:8

1. Signs of God's presence 7:1-9:7

A unifying theme in this subsection is children. The children were understandably a major concern of the Israelites threatened as they were with invasion. However, the children also embodied qualities that the adult Israelites needed to adopt to survive, such as innocence, trust, and acknowledged weakness. Indeed, a child promised in this passage, Jesus, would eventually save them.

Constable: Isa 7:10--8:11

Ahaz and Judah's test 7:10-8:10

Now Ahaz had to make a decision. Would he trust that God was with him and would protect Jerusalem, or would he reject God's promise and try to establish security another way?

Constable: Isa 7:10-17

The sign of Immanuel 7:10-17

Isaiah next tried to move Ahaz to faith (vv. 10-12), then denounced the king for his failure to trust Yahweh (vv. 13-15), and finally forecast a calamity worse than the division of Israel's united kingdom (vv. 16-17).

7:10 Evidently Isaiah's conversation with the king continued then and there. The prophet gave Ahaz another message from the Lord.

7:11 God commanded the king to ask Yahweh his God for a sign that He would indeed do what He had promised. Signs were immediate, physical confirmations that what a prophet had predicted farther in the future would indeed happen. They either confirmed that God had caused something to happen (cf. Exod. 3:12) or they confirmed that He would cause something to happen, as here (cf. 37:30; Jer. 44:29-30).⁹¹ Ahaz had the freedom to request any type of sign, and God promised to use it to bolster his faith.

7:12 Ahaz refused to ask for a sign. He did not want God to confirm that He would protect Judah because he had already decided not to trust God but to make other arrangements. He tried to justify his disobedience and his lack of faith with a pious statement that he did not want to test Yahweh (cf. Deut. 6:16). Testing the Lord got Israel into big trouble in the wilderness and at other times, but asking for a sign was not testing God when He commanded it.⁹² Ahaz wanted to appear to have great faith in God, but he had already decided to make an alliance with Assyria.

"This was like a mouse sending for the cat to help him against two rats!"⁹³

Ahaz may even have convinced himself that this alliance was the means God would use to deliver Judah. A sign from God would only prove that Ahaz's plan was contrary to God's will.⁹⁴

7:13 Isaiah saw right through the king's hypocrisy. He warned him by addressing him as the representative of the house of David. The plural "you" indicates that Isaiah was addressing all the members of the house of David and perhaps the whole nation (cf. v. 9). Yahweh had made covenant promises that David's dynasty would continue forever (2 Sam. 7:14; 1 Kings 8:25). Ahaz should not have feared being replaced by a puppet king (v. 6). Ahaz had said he would not test God (v. 12), but by refusing to ask for a sign that is precisely what he was doing, testing God's patience with Him. He was also testing the patience of the godly in Israel who were looking to their king to trust God. The prophet had called Yahweh Ahaz's God (v. 11), but now that the king had rebelled against Him Isaiah referred to the Lord as his (Isaiah's) God. This change was ominous suggesting that God would abandon the king.⁹⁵

"To appreciate fully the messianic portrait of Isaiah 1-39, it must be viewed against the backdrop of the generally negative presentation of Judahite kingship in these same chapters."⁹⁶

7:14 Israel's Sovereign Himself would give Ahaz and the house of David (plural "you") a sign that He was with His people even though the king refused to ask for one. The sign no longer was an inducement to faith but a confirmation of divine displeasure. A particular pregnant young woman would bear a son and name him Immanuel (God [is] with us; cf. Gen. 16:11; 17:19; Judg. 13:3).⁹⁷ This sign should have encouraged Ahaz to trust God's promise of deliverance and not rely on Assyria.

The Hebrew word for "virgin" is alma, which means a young women of marriageable age, but the word never describes a married woman in the Old Testament.⁹⁸ In Hebrew society, an unmarried woman of marriageable age would be a virgin. Thus alma had overtones of virginity about it and, in fact, sometimes described a virgin (cf. Gen. 24:43). This probably explains why the Septuagint translators chose the Greek word parthenos, meaning virgin, to translate alma here. However, Hebrew has a word for virgin, bethula, so why did not Isaiah use this word if he meant the mother of the child was a virgin? Probably Isaiah used alma rather than bethula because he did not want to stress the virginity of the mother, but this word does not rule virginity out either. God evidently led Isaiah to use alma so the predicted mother could be simply a young unmarried woman or a virgin. This allows the possibility of a double fulfillment, a young woman in Isaiah's day and a virgin hundreds of years later (cf. Matt. 1:23).⁹⁹

The naming of a child by its mother was not uncommon in Israel (cf. Gen. 4:1, 25; 29:31-30:13, 17-24; 35:18; Judg. 13:24; 1 Sam. 1:20; 4:21). In Jesus' case, it was appropriate that Joseph name Him rather than Mary since He was the Son of God as well as Mary's son.¹⁰⁰ The child's mother evidently named her baby Immanuel since she believed God would demonstrate His presence with Judah by preserving the nation from the Syro-Ephraimitic threat. Whoever the child was, Ahaz must have learned of his birth since the birth was to be a sign to him.¹⁰¹

Some very fine scholars have believed that there was no initial fulfillment of this prophecy in Isaiah's day, that no child born then served as a sign. Conservatives in this group believe that the only fulfillment was the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.¹⁰² The problem with this view is the lack of a sign in Isaiah's day. One response to this problem by an advocate of this view follows.

". . . the assurance that Christ was to be born in Judah, of its royal family, might be a sign to Ahaz, that the kingdom should not perish in his day; and so far was the remoteness of the sign in this case from making it absurd or inappropriate, that the further off it was, the stronger the promise of continuance to Judah, which it guaranteed."¹⁰³

7:15-16 Eating curds (thick, sour milk) and honey pictures a time of poverty in the land (cf. v. 22) following the Assyrian invasion that would follow relief from the Syro-Ephraimitic threat. The child born in Ahaz's day would eat this type of food when he became personally responsible for his decisions, an age that Isaiah left ambiguous intentionally. However before this child became responsible both of Judah's threatening neighbors, Syria and Ephraim, would cease to exist. Assyria invaded Syria and Israel in 733-32 B.C., only a year or two after this prophecy. Damascus fell in 732, and Samaria fell in 722 B.C. Jesus Christ also grew up in the Promised Land when it was under the rule of an oppressive foreign power and when life was hard.

7:17 Yahweh would bring on Judah a worse threat than Judah had faced since the united kingdom had split in Rehoboam's day, namely, the king of Assyria. Even though Syria and Israel would disappear as threats to Judah, Ahaz had done the wrong thing in failing to trust God because Assyria would pose an even worse threat. He had "taken a tiger by the tail."¹⁰⁴

"Whatever a man trusts in place of God will one day turn to devour him."¹⁰⁵

Constable: Isa 7:18-25

The threat of Assyria 7:18-25

This section explains how the coming days would be the worse since the division of the kingdom (v. 17). Assyria was not just a powerful and brutal enemy, but it would be a tool in Yahweh's hand that He would use to discipline Judah.

7:18-19 Yahweh would summon the armies of Assyria and Egypt to do His bidding as one whistles (or hisses) at insects (cf. 5:26).¹⁰⁶ Enemy soldiers would swarm everywhere in Judah (cf. Judg. 6:1-6).

7:20 Judah's Sovereign would particularly use Assyria, as a barber uses a razor, to remove all the "hair" from Judah, to completely humiliate her (cf. 2 Sam. 10:4-5). Ahaz was already negotiating to hire Tiglath-pileser III, the king of Assyria, perhaps secretly at this time, to come and help Judah against the Syro-Ephraimitic alliance. However, Yahweh would hire the Assyrians (King Sennacherib) to do His will, implying that He would pay them for their efforts, which He did, not Ahaz.

7:21-22 In that day of woe instead of having flocks and herds, the Judahites would be fortunate to have only one heifer and a couple of sheep. There would be such a lack of abundance of milk that they would have to curdle it to preserve it. They would also have to resort to eating honey instead of the variety of food items that they previously enjoyed. Even though food and drink would be scarce, it would be good food and drink because God would provide for the people who survived the Assyrian invasion.

7:23-25 Valuable farm land would revert to wilderness (cf. 5:5-6), and it would only be good for hunting. Formerly cultivated land would be used for grazing because there would be so many briars and thorns.

Guzik: Isa 7:1-25

Isaiah 7 - Shear-Jashub and Immanuel

A. The sign of Shear-Jashub.

1. (1-2) The northern nation of Israel and Syria combine to attack Judah.

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told to the house of David, saying, "Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim." So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind.

a. In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham: Ahaz was a wicked king of Judah, worshipping other gods and even sacrificing his son to Molech (2 Kings 16:1-4). The only good thing Ahaz seemed to do was father Hezekiah, who became a good king of Judah.

i. "He was a cowardly, superstitious and hypocritical ruler, one of the worst kings Judah ever had." (Bultema)

b. Rezin king of Syria and Pekah . . . king of Israel: The alliance between these two nations and their unsuccessful attack on Jerusalem is described in 2 Kings 16.

i. The attack on Jerusalem was ultimately unsuccessful, but the war against Judah took a great toll against the southern kingdom. 2 Chronicles 28:6 documents the damage: For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed one hundred and twenty thousand in Judah in one day, all valiant men, because they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers. 2 Chronicles 28:5 says that the Syrian army carried away a great multitude of them as captives. The king of Israel also captured 200,000 men, women and children as captives, but sent them back to Judah at the command of the prophet Oded (2 Chronicles 28:8-15).

ii. All in all, when the events of this chapter unfold, the nation of Judah had faced terrible calamity, and was devastated. As the combined armies of Israel and Syria approached Jerusalem, it looked like everything would be lost. Ahaz was challenged to trust God when things were bad, and it looked like soon, all would be lost.

c. Went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it: How was Ahaz saved from this attack? Because he entered into an ungodly alliance with Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, and even gave Tiglath-Pileser silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD as a present to win his favor and protection (2 Kings 16:7-9).

i. When Ahaz went to meet Tiglath-Pileser, his new master, in Damascus, he saw the pagan altars and places of sacrifice. He copied these designs and remodeled the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem after the pattern of the pagan temple and altars in Damascus. Ahaz is a powerful, extreme example of someone who enters into an ungodly alliance for "good" reasons, and is thoroughly corrupted thereby (2 Kings 16:10-18).

ii. It is important to understand that the events of this chapter happened before Ahaz made his final decision to put his trust in Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria. Though we are told the end result of the attack in Isaiah 7:2 (could not prevail against it), Isaiah is telling us the end result before he describes his prophecy to Ahaz. This disregard for chronological order may be frustrating to us, but is completely natural to the ancient Hebrew mind.

d. Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim: Ephraim is another title for the northern nation of Israel. King Ahaz heard that Syria and Israel had joined together to make war against Judah.

e. So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind: King Ahaz and his people react with fear instead of with trust in God. They are shaken and unstable in their hearts.

i. In this, the people of Judah really are the people of Ahaz (his people), not the people of the LORD. God was not shaken or unsettled by this threat. If the king of Judah and the people of Judah had put their trust in the LORD, they would have had the peace of God in this conflict.

2. (3-9) The word of the LORD to Ahaz through Isaiah.

Then the LORD said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-Jashub your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller's Field, and say to him: 'Take heed, and be quiet; do not fear or be fainthearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have plotted evil against you, saying, "Let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over them, the son of Tabel"; thus says the Lord GOD: "It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established."'"

a. You and Shear-Jashub your son: Isaiah was told to take his son, named Shear-Jashub, and bring a word from the LORD to Ahaz. He brought his son as a walking object lesson, because the name Shear-Jashub means, "A Remnant Shall Return."

b. At the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller's Field: These seemingly irrelevant details make an important point. All this happened to real people at a real time and in real places. This isn't make believe or fairy tales. This is real.

c. Take heed, and be quiet: Seemingly, Ahaz needed to pay attention (take heed) and stop his talking about the problem (be quiet). He needed to trust God, and take courage in the LORD (do not fear or be fainthearted).

i. Perhaps also, the calamity and devastation that had wracked Judah thus far had made Ahaz stop trusting in God. "If God loves me, why am I in this mess at all? Trust Him now, after all He has allowed to happen? Are you crazy?"

d. Why was it so hard for Ahaz to do this? Because he didn't see the situation the way the LORD did. Ahaz looked at Israel and Syria and saw a terrible threat. God looked at Israel and Syria and saw two stubs of smoking firebrands. To the LORD, they were all smoke and no fire!

i. "One would think that they are endued with so great power that they could burn and destroy the whole world. To put down the excess of terror, the Lord declares that what we imagined to be a burning, and a perpetual burning, is but a slight smoke and of short duration." (Calvin)

ii. "Calleth them in contempt a couple of firebrands, such as would do mischief but cannot, because smoking and not burning, and but the tails of smoking firebrands neither, such as are smoking their last, and shall shortly be utterly extinct. In a word, they have more pride than power, being a mere flash." (Trapp)

e. It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass: Certainly, the king of Israel and the king of Syria had their plans - they have taken evil counsel against you. They wanted to attack Jerusalem, defeat the capital of Judah (make a gap in its wall), then depose Ahaz and set up their own king. But God was not worried about their plans. They looked like a big, flaming threat to Ahaz, but God looked and saw two stubs of smoking firebrands, and simply said, "It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass."

i. Their plans will not succeed because the nations are led by ungodly men (Rezin and Remaliah's son), and not by the LORD. This is God's promise, and Isaiah calls Ahaz to trust in the LORD and in His promise.

f. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established: Here is the challenge to Ahaz. God has promised, now the king of Judah must believe. If he will not believe, it will not affect the outcome of the attack against Jerusalem. God has already decreed that their attack would not succeed. But it would affect the course of Ahaz's life and reign as king (surely you shall not be established).

i. As it happened, Ahaz did not believe. He did not put his trust in the LORD. He put his trust in carnal methods and the king of Assyria. Jerusalem was spared, and Ahaz no doubt believed he was successful, and his plan worked. But if he would have just trusted in the LORD, Jerusalem would have been spared, and Ahaz would have been blessed.

g. Why did Isaiah bring his son Shear-Jashub? Because his name meant A Remnant Shall Return, and God wanted Ahaz to know that because of the kind of ungodly trust he put in the king of Assyria, Judah would eventually be taken into captivity, and only a remnant would return.

B. The sign of Immanuel.

1. (10-12) Ahaz will not ask for a sign.

Moreover the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, "Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above." But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!"

a. Ask a sign for yourself: Through the prophet Isaiah, God invites Ahaz to ask for a sign. God has just challenged Ahaz to believe and be blessed, and now God offers to give Ahaz a basis for belief - a sign for yourself.

b. But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" This sounds very spiritual from Ahaz. He almost seems to say what Jesus said in Matthew 4:7: "You shall not tempt the LORD your God." Though the words are similar, the hearts are far apart. Ahaz refused to ask for a sign, because when God fulfilled the sign, he would be "obligated" to believe.

i. This was not tempting or testing God in wrong way. It is never testing God to do as He says, and if the LORD invites us to test Him, we should. For example, in Malachi 3:10, the LORD invited Israel to give as He commanded, and thereby to prove Me now in this.

ii. Again, perhaps Ahaz was bitter against the LORD, because of all the disaster Judah had already been through at the hands of Israel and Syria. Perhaps his mind is, "I want nothing to do with the God who allowed it to get this bad."

iii. Haven't we, in some way, to some degree, been where Ahaz was? Haven't we rejected the gracious, free gifts of God for silly and strange reasons? "Here let us each descend and dive into his own conscience, to see whether we also have not matched Ahaz in his madness, or at leastwise coasted too near upon his unkind usage of the Lord, by rejecting his sweet offers of grace and motions of mercy, by slighting his holy sacraments, those signs and seals of the righteousness that is by faith." (Trapp)

2. (13-16) The LORD's sign to Ahaz: the sign of Immanuel.

Then he said, "Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings."

a. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? The rulers of Judah treated other people poorly, but they treated the LORD even more poorly. If many of us expressed the same distrust we have towards the LORD towards other people, we might get a punch in the nose!

i. "How heartily angry is the prophet, how blessedly blown up in this case to so great dishonor done to God! We should be so too." (Trapp)

ii. Spurgeon speaks well to this point: "Did I not hear some one say, 'Ah, sir, I have been trying to believe for years.' Terrible words! They make the case still worse. Imagine that after I had made a statement, a man should declare that he did not believe me, in fact, he could not believe me though he would like to do so. I should feel aggrieved certainly; but it would make matters worse if he added, 'In fact I have been for years trying to believe you, and I cannot do it.' What does he mean by that? What can he mean but that I am so incorrigibly false, and such a confirmed liar, that though he would like to give me some credit, he really cannot do it? With all the effort he can make in my favour, he finds it quite beyond his power to believe me? Now, a man who says, 'I have been trying to believe in God,' in reality says just that with regard to the Most High."

b. Therefore the Lord Himself will give you as sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. This is one of the most famous prophecies regarding the birth of Jesus the Messiah in the Bible. It also illustrates a principle of prophecy, that prophecy may have both a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment.

i. Spurgeon said of this passage, that it is said to be "One of the most difficult in all the Word of God. It may be so; I certainly did not think it was until I saw what the commentators had to say about it, and I rose up from reading them perfectly confused."

ii. "It is characteristic of predictive prophecy that it often mingles different times together in one composite picture" (Martin)

c. The near fulfillment of this prophecy centered around Ahaz, Jerusalem, and the attack from Israel and Syria. For Ahaz, the sign centered around a time span (For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings). Simply put, God would give Ahaz a sign that within a few years, both Israel and Syria would be crushed. This was a sign of deliverance to Ahaz.

i. Many commentators think that this was immediately fulfilled when a young woman in the royal household shortly married, conceived a son, and unknowingly naming him "Immanuel." Before this boy came to eat solid food, Israel and Syria were be defeated. It is also possible that God is just referring in a figurative way to a year or two period of time.

ii. "The name 'Immanuel' was a rebuke to Ahaz. If 'God is with us,' then why should he have feared the enemy?" (Wolf)

iii. "The 'sign' of the child, therefore, constitutes an indication that the all-sovereign and all-knowing God has the situation completely in hand, and it rebukes the king's lack of faith in him." (Grogan)

d. The far or ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy goes far beyond Ahaz, to announce the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

i. We know this passage speaks of Jesus because the Holy Spirit says so through Matthew: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, "God with us." (Matthew 1:23)

ii. We know this passage speaks of Jesus because the prophecy is addressed not only to Ahaz, but also to David's entire house (O house of David!).

iii. We know this passage speaks of Jesus because it says the virgin shall conceive, and that conception would be a sign to David's entire house. Those who deny the virgin birth of Jesus like to point out that the Hebrew word translated virgin (almah) can also be translated as "young woman." The idea is that Isaiah was simply saying that a "young woman" would give birth, not a virgin. While the near fulfillment may have reference to a young woman giving birth, the far or ultimate fulfillment clearly points to a woman miraculously conceiving and giving birth. This is especially clear because the Old Testament never uses the word in a context other than virgin and because the Septuagint translates it categorically virgin (parthenos).

iv. We know this passage speaks of Jesus because it says He will be known as Immanuel, meaning "God with Us." This was true of Jesus in fact, not only as a title. Immanuel speaks both of the deity of Jesus (God with us) and His identification and nearness to man (God with us).

e. Jesus is truly Immanuel, God with us. "Christ, indeed, was not called by this name Immanuel that we anywhere read of . . . but the import of this name is most truly affirmed and acknowledged to be fully made good in him." (Trapp)

i. "He is, therefore, called God with us, or united to us; which cannot apply to a man who is not God . . . it denotes not only the power of God, such as he usually displays by his servant, but a union of person, by which Christ became God-man." (Calvin)

ii. "In what sense then, is Christ GOD WITH US? Jesus is called Immanuel, or God with us, in his incarnation; God with us, by the influences of his Holy Spirit, in the holy sacrament, in the preaching of his word, in private prayer. And God with us, through every action of our life, that we begin, continue, and end in his name. He is God with us, to comfort, enlighten, protect, and defend us, in every time of temptation and trial, in the hour of death, in the day of judgment; and God with us and in us, and we with and in him, to all eternity." (Clarke)

3. (17-25) Assyria, the nation Ahaz trusted, will also bring ruin to Judah.

"The LORD will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house; days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah." And it shall come to pass in that day that the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. They will come, and all of them will rest in the desolate valleys and in the clefts of the rocks, and on all thorns and in all pastures. In the same day the Lord will shave with a hired razor, with those from beyond the River, with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the legs, and will also remove the beard. It shall be in that day that a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep; so it shall be, from the abundance of milk they give, that he will eat curds; for curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land. It shall happen in that day, that wherever there could be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver, it will be for briers and thorns. With arrows and bows men will come there, because all the land will become briers and thorns. And to any hill which could be dug with the hoe, you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns; but it will become a range for oxen and a place for sheep to roam.

a. The LORD will bring the king of Assyria upon you: This was bad news to Ahaz, who had been foolishly trusting in Assyria instead of the LORD. It is as if the LORD is saying, "It will seem to you like trusting in Assyria is a clever move, because the armies of Syria and Israel will be defeated. But the Assyrians will end up defeating you also."

i. "Thou mightest have remained at home and at ease, and mightest have received the assistance of God; but thou choosest rather to call in the Assyrians. Thou shalt find them to be worse than thine own enemies." (Calvin)

ii. If Ahaz understood and believed what the LORD said, it would have terrified him. The Assyrians were well known for their sheer cruelty, especially over the nations they conquered. They delighted in the torture and humiliation (shave with a hired razor . . . the head and the hair of the legs).

iii. "To shave off the beard of an Oriental was an unbearable shame to him and was a sign of great sadness and mourning as well as despicable slavery." (Bultema) We see this principle illustrated by the actions of David in 2 Samuel 10:4-5.

b. The LORD will whistle for the fly that is the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that in the land of Assyria. They will come: Judah will not only be attacked by the Assyrians, they would also be invaded by the Egyptians. God would pinch Judah between these mighty nations to the north and south.

i. These invasions would bring Judah low, so that they could not farm as normally, and instead curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land. Normal agriculture would be devastated (wherever there could be a thousand vines . . . it will be for briars and thorns). Former farms will be suitable only for grazing (it will become a range for oxen and place for sheep to roam).

© 2001 David Guzik - No distribution beyond personal use without permission

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

ISAIAH, son of Amoz (not Amos); contemporary of Jonah, Amos, Hosea, in Israel, but younger than they; and of Micah, in Judah. His call to a higher degree of the prophetic office (Isa 6:1-13) is assigned to the last year of Uzziah, that is, 754 B.C. The first through fifth chapters belong to the closing years of that reign; not, as some think, to Jotham's reign: in the reign of the latter he seems to have exercised his office only orally, and not to have left any record of his prophecies because they were not intended for all ages. The first through fifth and sixth chapters are all that was designed for the Church universal of the prophecies of the first twenty years of his office. New historical epochs, such as occurred in the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, when the affairs of Israel became interwoven with those of the Asiatic empires, are marked by prophetic writings. The prophets had now to interpret the judgments of the Lord, so as to make the people conscious of His punitive justice, as also of His mercy. Isa. 7:1-10:4 belong to the reign of Ahaz. The thirty-sixth through thirty-ninth chapters are historical, reaching to the fifteenth year of Hezekiah; probably the tenth through twelfth chapters and all from the thirteenth through twenty-sixth chapters, inclusive, belong to the same reign; the historical section being appended to facilitate the right understanding of these prophecies; thus we have Isaiah's office extending from about 760 to 713 B.C., forty-seven years. Tradition (Talmud) represents him as having been sawn asunder by Manasseh with a wooden saw, for having said that he had seen Jehovah (Exo 33:20; 2Ki 21:16; Heb 11:37). 2Ch 32:32 seems to imply that Isaiah survived Hezekiah; but "first and last" is not added, as in 2Ch 26:22, which makes it possible that his history of Hezekiah was only carried up to a certain point. The second part, the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters, containing complaints of gross idolatry, needs not to be restricted to Manasseh's reign, but is applicable to previous reigns. At the accession of Manasseh, Isaiah would be eighty-four; and if he prophesied for eight years afterwards, he must have endured martyrdom at ninety-two; so Hosea prophesied for sixty years. And Eastern tradition reports that he lived to one hundred and twenty. The conclusive argument against the tradition is that, according to the inscription, all Isaiah's prophecies are included in the time from Uzziah to Hezekiah; and the internal evidence accords with this.

His WIFE is called the prophetess [Isa 8:3], that is, endowed, as Miriam, with a prophetic gift.

His CHILDREN were considered by him as not belonging merely to himself; in their names, Shearjashub, "the remnant shall return" [Isa 7:3, Margin], and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "speeding to the spoil, he hasteth to the prey" [Isa 8:1, Margin], the two chief points of his prophecies are intimated to the people, the judgments of the Lord on the people and the world, and yet His mercy to the elect.

His GARMENT of sackcloth (Isa 20:2), too, was a silent preaching by fact; he appears as the embodiment of that repentance which he taught.

His HISTORICAL WORKS.--History, as written by the prophets, is retroverted prophecy. As the past and future alike proceed from the essence of God, an inspired insight into the past implies an insight into the future, and vice versa. Hence most of the Old Testament histories are written by prophets and are classed with their writings; the Chronicles being not so classed, cannot have been written by them, but are taken from historical monographs of theirs; for example, Isaiah's life of Uzziah, 2Ch 26:22; also of Hezekiah, 2Ch 32:32; of these latter all that was important for all ages has been preserved to us, while the rest, which was local and temporary, has been lost.

The INSCRIPTION (Isa 1:1) applies to the whole book and implies that Isaiah is the author of the second part (the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters), as well as of the first. Nor do the words, "concerning Judah and Jerusalem" [Isa 1:1], oppose the idea that the inscription applies to the whole; for whatever he says against other nations, he says on account of their relation to Judah. So the inscription of Amos, "concerning Israel" [Amo 1:1], though several prophecies follow against foreign nations. EWALD maintains that the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters, though spurious, were subjoined to the previous portion, in order to preserve the former. But it is untrue that the first portion is unconnected with those chapters. The former ends with the Babylonian exile (Isa 39:6), the latter begins with the coming redemption from it. The portion, the fortieth through forty-sixth chapters, has no heading of its own, a proof that it is closely connected with what precedes, and falls under the general heading in Isa 1:1. JOSEPHUS (The Antiquities of the Jews, 11. 1, sec. 1, 2) says that Cyrus was induced by the prophecies of Isaiah (Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1, Isa 45:13) to aid the Jews in returning and rebuilding the temple Ezr 1:1-11 confirms this; Cyrus in his edict there plainly refers to the prophecies in the second portion, which assign the kingdoms to him from Jehovah, and the duty of rebuilding the temple. Probably he took from them his historical name Cyrus (Coresh). Moreover, subsequent prophets imitate this second portion, which EWALD assigns to later times; for example, compare Jer. 50:1-51:64 with Isaiah's predictions against Babylon [Isa. 13:1-14:23]. "The Holy One of Israel," occurring but three times elsewhere in the Old Testament [2Ki 19:22; Psa 78:41; Psa 89:18; Jer 50:29; Jer 51:5], is a favorite expression in the second, as in the first portion of Isaiah: it expresses God's covenant faithfulness in fulfilling the promises therein: Jeremiah borrows the expression from him. Also Ecclesiasticus 48:22-25 ("comforted"), quotes Isa 40:1 as Isaiah's. Luk 4:17 quotes Isa 61:1-2 as Isaiah's, and as read as such by Jesus Christ in the synagogue.

The DEFINITENESS of the prophecies is striking: As in the second portion of isaiah, so in Mic 4:8-10, the Babylonian exile, and the deliverance from it, are foretold a hundred fifty years before any hostilities had arisen between Babylon and Judah. On the other hand, all the prophets who foretell the Assyrian invasion coincide in stating, that Judah should be delivered from it, not by Egyptian aid, but directly by the Lord. Again Jeremiah, in the height of the Chaldean prosperity, foretold its conquest by the Medes, who should enter Babylon through the dry bed of the Euphrates on a night of general revelry. No human calculation could have discovered these facts. EICHORN terms these prophecies "veiled historical descriptions," recognizing in spite of himself that they are more than general poetical fancies. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was certainly written ages before the Messiah, yet it minutely portrays His sufferings: these cannot be Jewish inventions, for the Jews looked for a reigning, not a suffering, Messiah.

Rationalists are so far right that THE PROPHECIES ARE ON A GENERAL BASIS whereby they are distinguished from soothsaying. They rest on the essential idea of God. The prophets, penetrated by this inner knowledge of His character, became conscious of the eternal laws by which the world is governed: that sin is man's ruin, and must be followed by judgment, but that God's covenant mercy to His elect is unchangeable. Without prophetism, the elect remnant would have decreased, and even God's judgments would have missed their end, by not being recognized as such: they would have been unmeaning, isolated facts. Babylon was in Isaiah's days under Assyria; it had tried a revolt unsuccessfully: but the elements of its subsequent success and greatness were then existing. The Holy Ghost enlightened his natural powers to discern this its rise; and his spiritual faculties, to foresee its fall, the sure consequence, in God's eternal law, of the pride which pagan success generates--and also Judah's restoration, as the covenant-people, with whom God, according to His essential character, would not be wroth for ever. True conversion is the prophet's grand remedy against all evils: in this alone consists his politics. Rebuke, threatening, and promise, regularly succeed one another. The idea at the basis of all is in Isa 26:7-9; Lev 10:3; Amo 3:2.

The USE OF THE PRESENT AND PRETERITE in prophecy is no proof that the author is later than Isaiah. For seers view the future as present, and indicate what is ideally past, not really past; seeing things in the light of God, who "calls the things that are not as though they were." Moreover, as in looking from a height on a landscape, hills seem close together which are really wide apart, so, in events foretold, the order, succession, and grouping are presented, but the intervals of time are overlooked. The time, however, is sometimes marked (Jer 25:12; Dan 9:26). Thus the deliverance from Babylon, and that effected by Messiah, are in rapid transition grouped together by THE LAW OF PROPHETIC SUGGESTION; yet no prophet so confounds the two as to make Messiah the leader of Israel from Babylon. To the prophet there was probably no double sense; but to his spiritual eye the two events, though distinct, lay so near, and were so analogous, that he could not separate them in description without unfaithfulness to the picture presented before him. The more remote and antitypical event, however, namely, Messiah's coming, is that to which he always hastens, and which he describes with far more minuteness than he does the nearer type; for example, Cyrus (compare Isa 45:1 with Isa 53:1-12). In some cases he takes his stand in the midst of events between, for example, the humiliation of Jesus Christ, which he views as past, and His glorification, as yet to come, using the future tense as to the latter (compare Isa 53:4-9 with Isa 53:10-12). Marks of the time of events are given sparingly in the prophets: yet, as to Messiah, definitely enough to create the general expectation of Him at the time that He was in fact born.

The CHALDÆISMS alleged against the genuineness of the second portion of Isaiah, are found more in the first and undoubted portion. They occur in all the Old Testament, especially in the poetical parts, which prefer unusual expressions, and are due to the fact that the patriarchs were surrounded by Chaldee-speaking people; and in Isaiah's time a few Chaldee words had crept in from abroad.

His SYMBOLS are few and simple, and his poetical images correct; in the prophets, during and after the exile, the reverse holds good; Haggai and Malachi are not exceptions; for, though void of bold images, their style, unlike Isaiah's, rises little above prose: a clear proof that our Isaiah was long before the exile.

Of VISIONS, strictly so called, he has but one, that in the sixth chapter; even it is more simple than those in later prophets. But he often gives SIGNS, that is, a present fact as pledge of the more distant future; God condescending to the feebleness of man (Isa 7:14; Isa 37:30; Isa 38:7).

The VARIETIES IN HIS STYLE do not prove spuriousness, but that he varied his style with his subject. The second portion is not so much addressed to his contemporaries, as to the future people of the Lord, the elect remnant, purified by the previous judgments. Hence its tenderness of style, and frequent repetitions (Isa 40:1): for comforting exhortation uses many words; so also the many epithets added to the name of God, intended as stays whereon faith may rest for comfort, so as not to despair. In both portions alike there are peculiarities characteristic of Isaiah; for example, "to be called" equivalent to to be: the repetition of the same words, instead of synonyms, in the parallel members of verses; the interspersing of his prophecies with hymns: "the remnant of olive trees," &c., for the remnant of people who have escaped God's judgments. Also compare Isa 65:25 with Isa 11:6.

The CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT favors the opinion that Isaiah himself collected his prophecies into the volume; not Hezekiah's men, as the Talmud guesses from Pro 25:1. All the portions, the dates of which can be ascertained, stand in the right place, except a few instances, where prophecies of similar contents are placed together: with the termination of the Assyrian invasion (the thirty-sixth through thirty-ninth chapters) terminated the public life of Isaiah. The second part is his prophetic legacy to the small band of the faithful, analogous to the last speeches of Moses and of Jesus Christ to His chosen disciples.

The EXPECTATION OF MESSIAH is so strong in Isaiah, that JEROME To Paulinus calls his book not a prophecy, but the gospel: "He is not so much a prophet as an evangelist." Messiah was already shadowed forth in Gen 49:10, as the Shiloh, or tranquillizer; also in Psalms 2, 45, 72, 110. Isaiah brings it out more definitely; and, whereas they dwelt on His kingly office, Isaiah develops most His priestly and prophetic office; the hundred tenth Psalm also had set forth His priesthood, but His kingly rather than, as Isaiah, His suffering, priesthood. The latter is especially dwelt on in the second part, addressed to the faithful elect; whereas the first part, addressed to the whole people, dwells on Messiah's glory, the antidote to the fears which then filled the people, and the assurance that the kingdom of God, then represented by Judah, would not be overwhelmed by the surrounding nations.

His STYLE (HENGSTENBERG, Christology of the Old Testament,) is simple and sublime; in imagery, intermediate between the poverty of Jeremiah and the exuberance of Ezekiel. He shows his command of it in varying it to suit his subject.

The FORM is mostly that of Hebrew poetical parallelism, with, however, a freedom unshackled by undue restrictions.

JUDAH, the less apostate people, rather than Israel, was the subject of his prophecies: his residence was mostly at Jerusalem. On his praises, see Ecclesiasticus 48:22-25. Christ and the apostles quote no prophet so frequently.

JFB: Isaiah (Outline)

• PARABLE OF JEHOVAH'S VINEYARD. (Isa. 5:1-30)
• SIX DISTINCT WOES AGAINST CRIMES. (Isa. 5:8-23) (Lev 25:13; Mic 2:2). The jubilee restoration of possessions was intended as a guard against avarice.
• VISION OF JEHOVAH IN HIS TEMPLE. (Isa 6:1-13)
• PREDICTION OF THE ILL SUCCESS OF THE SYRO-ISRAELITISH INVASION OF JUDAH--AHAZ'S ALLIANCE WITH ASSYRIA, AND ITS FATAL RESULTS TO JUDEA--YET THE CERTAINTY OF FINAL PRESERVATION AND OF THE COMING OF MESSIAH. (Isa. 7:1-9:7)
• FATAL CONSEQUENCES OF AHAZ' ASSYRIAN POLICY. (Isa 7:17-25)
• THE COMING DESOLATE STATE OF THE LAND OWING TO THE ASSYRIANS AND EGYPTIANS. (Isa 7:21-25)
• CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY IN THE EIGHTH CHAPTER. (Isa 9:1-7)
• PROPHECY AS TO THE TEN TRIBES. (Isa. 9:8-10:4) Heading of the prophecy; (Isa 9:8-12), the first strophe.
• THANKSGIVING HYMN OF THE RESTORED AND CONVERTED JEWS. (Isa 12:1-6)
• THE THIRTEENTH THROUGH TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTERS CONTAIN PROPHECIES AS TO FOREIGN NATIONS.--THE THIRTEENTH, FOURTEENTH, AND TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTERS AS TO BABYLON AND ASSYRIA. (Isa. 13:1-22)
• CONFIRMATION OF THIS BY THE HEREFORETOLD DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSYRIANS UNDER SENNACHERIB. (Isa 14:24-27)
• A CHORUS OF JEWS EXPRESS THEIR JOYFUL SURPRISE AT BABYLON'S DOWNFALL. (Isa 14:4-8)
• THE SCENE CHANGES FROM EARTH TO HELL. (Isa 14:9-11)
• THE JEWS ADDRESS HIM AGAIN AS A FALLEN ONCE-BRIGHT STAR. (Isa 14:12-15)
• THE PASSERS-BY CONTEMPLATE WITH ASTONISHMENT THE BODY OF THE KING OF BABYLON CAST OUT, INSTEAD OF LYING IN A SPLENDID MAUSOLEUM, AND CAN HARDLY BELIEVE THEIR SENSES THAT IT IS HE. (Isa 14:16-20)
• GOD'S DETERMINATION TO DESTROY BABYLON. (Isa 14:21-23)
• A FRAGMENT AS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSYRIANS UNDER SENNACHERIB. (Isa 14:24-27) In this verse the Lord's thought (purpose) stands in antithesis to the Assyrians' thoughts (Isa 10:7). (See Isa 46:10-11; 1Sa 15:29; Mal 3:6).
• PROPHECY AGAINST PHILISTIA. (Isa 14:28-32)
• THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTERS FORM ONE PROPHECY ON MOAB. (Isa 15:1-9)
• CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY AS TO MOAB. (Isa 16:1-14)
• CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT OF THE NINETEENTH CHAPTER, BUT AT A LATER DATE. CAPTIVITY OF EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. (Isa 20:1-6)
• REPETITION OF THE ASSURANCE GIVEN IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CHAPTERS TO THE JEWS ABOUT TO BE CAPTIVES IN BABYLON, THAT THEIR ENEMY SHOULD BE DESTROYED AND THEY BE DELIVERED. (Isa 21:1-10)
• A PROPHECY TO THE IDUMEANS WHO TAUNTED THE AFFLICTED JEWS IN THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. (Isa 21:11-12)
• PROPHECY THAT ARABIA WOULD BE OVERRUN BY A FOREIGN FOE WITHIN A YEAR. (Isa 21:13-17)
• PROPHECY AS TO AN ATTACK ON JERUSALEM. (Isa 22:1-14)
• PROPHECY THAT SHEBNA SHOULD BE DEPOSED FROM BEING PREFECT OF THE PALACE, AND ELIAKIM PROMOTED TO THE OFFICE. (Isa 22:15-25)
• PROPHECY RESPECTING TYRE. (Isa. 23:1-18)
• THE LAST TIMES OF THE WORLD IN GENERAL, AND OF JUDAH AND THE CHURCH IN PARTICULAR. (Isa. 24:1-23)
• CONTINUATION OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER. THANKSGIVING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF THE APOSTATE FACTION, AND THE SETTING UP OF JEHOVAH'S THRONE ON ZION. (Isa 25:1-12)
• CONNECTED WITH THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTERS. SONG OF PRAISE OF ISRAEL AFTER BEING RESTORED TO THEIR OWN LAND. (Isa. 26:1-21)
• CONTINUATION OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH, TWENTY-FIFTH, AND TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTERS. (Isa 27:1-13)
• COMING INVASION OF JERUSALEM: ITS FAILURE: UNBELIEF OF THE JEWS. (Isa. 29:1-24)
• THE THIRTIETH THROUGH THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTERS REFER PROBABLY TO THE SUMMER OF 714 B.C., AS THE TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER TO THE PASSOVER OF THAT YEAR. (Isa. 30:1-32)
• THE CHIEF STRENGTH OF THE EGYPTIAN ARMIES LAY IN THEIR CAVALRY. (Isa 31:1-9)
• MESSIAH'S KINGDOM; DESOLATIONS, TO BE SUCCEEDED BY LASTING PEACE, THE SPIRIT HAVING BEEN POURED OUT. (Isa. 32:1-20)
• JUDGMENT ON IDUMEA. (Isa. 34:1-17) All creation is summoned to hear God's judgments (Eze 6:3; Deu 32:1; Psa 50:4; Mic 6:1-2), for they set forth His glory, which is the end of creation (Rev 15:3; Rev 4:11).
• CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY IN THE THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER. (Isa 35:1-10)
• SENNACHERIB'S INVASION; BLASPHEMOUS SOLICITATIONS; HEZEKIAH IS TOLD OF THEM. (Isa. 36:1-22)
• CONTINUATION OF THE NARRATIVE IN THE THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER. (Isa. 37:1-38)
• HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS; PERHAPS CONNECTED WITH THE PLAGUE OR BLAST WHEREBY THE ASSYRIAN ARMY HAD BEEN DESTROYED. (Isa. 38:1-22)
• HEZEKIAH'S ERROR IN THE DISPLAY OF HIS RICHES TO THE BABYLONIAN AMBASSADOR. (Isa 39:1-8)
• SECOND PART OF THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH. (Isa. 40:1-31)
• ADDITIONAL REASONS WHY THE JEWS SHOULD PLACE CONFIDENCE IN GOD'S PROMISES OF DELIVERING THEM; HE WILL RAISE UP A PRINCE AS THEIR DELIVERER, WHEREAS THE IDOLS COULD NOT DELIVER THE HEATHEN NATIONS FROM THAT PRINCE. (Isa. 41:1-29) (Zec 2:13). God is about to argue the case; therefore let the nations listen in reverential silence. Compare Gen 28:16-17, as to the spirit in which we ought to behave before God.
• MESSIAH THE ANTITYPE OF CYRUS. (Isa. 42:1-25)
• CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER. (Isa. 44:1-28)
• BABYLON'S IDOLS COULD NOT SAVE THEMSELVES, MUCH LESS HER. BUT GOD CAN AND WILL SAVE ISRAEL: CYRUS IS HIS INSTRUMENT. (Isa 46:1-13)
• THE DESTRUCTION OF BABYLON IS REPRESENTED UNDER THE IMAGE OF A ROYAL VIRGIN BROUGHT DOWN IN A MOMENT FROM HER MAGNIFICENT THRONE TO THE EXTREME OF DEGRADATION. (Isa. 47:1-15)
• THE THINGS THAT BEFALL BABYLON JEHOVAH PREDICTED LONG BEFORE, LEST ISRAEL SHOULD ATTRIBUTE THEM, IN ITS "OBSTINATE" PERVERSITY, TO STRANGE GODS. (Isa 48:1-5). (Isa. 48:1-22)
• SIMILAR TO CHAPTER 42. (Isa 49:1-9). (Isa. 49:1-26)
• THE JUDGMENTS ON ISRAEL WERE PROVOKED BY THEIR CRIMES, YET THEY ARE NOT FINALLY CAST OFF BY GOD. (Isa 50:1-11)
• ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE FAITHFUL REMNANT OF ISRAEL TO TRUST IN GOD FOR DELIVERANCE, BOTH FROM THEIR LONG BABYLONIAN EXILE, AND FROM THEIR PRESENT DISPERSION. (Isa. 51:1-23)
• FIRST THROUGH THIRTEEN VERSES CONNECTED WITH FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER. (Isa. 52:1-15)
• MAN'S UNBELIEF: MESSIAH'S VICARIOUS SUFFERINGS, AND FINAL TRIUMPH FOR MAN. (Isa 53:1-12)
• THE FRUIT OF MESSIAH'S SUFFERINGS, AND OF ISRAEL'S FINAL PENITENCE AT HER PAST UNBELIEF (Isa 53:6): HER JOYFUL RESTORATION AND ENLARGEMENT BY JEHOVAH, WHOSE WRATH WAS MOMENTARY, BUT HIS KINDNESS EVERLASTING. (Isa. 54:1-17)
• THE CALL OF THE GENTILE WORLD TO FAITH THE RESULT OF GOD'S GRACE TO THE JEWS FIRST. (Isa 55:1-13)
• THE PREPARATION NEEDED ON THE PART OF THOSE WHO WISH TO BE ADMITTED TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. (Isa 56:1-12)
• THE PEACEFUL DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS FEW: THE UNGODLINESS OF THE MANY: A BELIEVING REMNANT SHALL SURVIVE THE GENERAL JUDGMENTS OF THE NATION, AND BE RESTORED BY HIM WHO CREATES PEACE. (Isa. 57:1-21)
• REPROOF OF THE JEWS FOR THEIR DEPENDENCE ON MERE OUTWARD FORMS OF WORSHIP. (Isa 58:1-14)
• THE PEOPLE'S SIN THE CAUSE OF JUDGMENTS: THEY AT LAST OWN IT THEMSELVES: THE REDEEMER'S FUTURE INTERPOSITION IN THEIR EXTREMITY. (Isa. 59:1-21)
• ISRAEL'S GLORY AFTER HER AFFLICTION. (Isa. 60:1-22)
• MESSIAH'S OFFICES: RESTORATION OF ISRAEL. (Isa 61:1-11)
• INTERCESSORY PRAYERS FOR ZION'S RESTORATION, ACCOMPANYING GOD'S PROMISES OF IT, AS THE APPOINTED MEANS OF ACCOMPLISHING IT. (Isa 62:1-12)
• MESSIAH COMING AS THE AVENGER, IN ANSWER TO HIS PEOPLE'S PRAYERS. (Isa. 63:1-19)
• TRANSITION FROM COMPLAINT TO PRAYER. (Isa 64:1-12)
• GOD'S REPLY IN JUSTIFICATION OF HIS DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL. (Isa. 65:1-25)
• THE HUMBLE COMFORTED, THE UNGODLY CONDEMNED, AT THE LORD'S APPEARING: JERUSALEM MADE A JOY ON EARTH. (Isa. 66:1-24)

TSK: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

Isaiah has, with singular propriety, been denominated the Evangelical Prophet, on account of the number and variety of his prophecies concerning the advent and character, the ministry and preaching, the sufferings and death, and the extensive and permanent kingdom of the Messiah. So explicit and determinate are his predictions, as well as so numerous, that he seems to speak rather of things past than of events yet future; and he may be rather called an evangelist than a prophet. Though later critics, especially those on the continent, have expended much labour and learning in order to rob the prophet of his title; yet no one, whose mind is unprejudiced, can be at a loss in applying select portions of these prophecies to the mission and character of Jesus Christ, and to the events in his history which they are cited to illustrate by the sacred writers of the New Testament. In fact, his prophecies concerning the Messiah seem almost to anticipate the Gospel history; so clearly do they predict his Divine character. (Compare Isa 7:14 with Mat 1:18-23, and Luk 1:27-35; see Isa 6:1-13; Isa 9:6; Isa 35:4; Isa 40:5, Isa 40:9, Isa 40:19; Isa 42:6-8; compare Isa 61:1, with Luk 4:18; see Isa 62:11; Isa 63:1-4); his miracles (Isa 35:5, Isa 35:6); his peculiar character and virtues (Isa 11:2, Isa 11:3; Isa 40:11; Isa 43:1-3); his rejection (Compare Isa 6:9-12 with Mar 13:14; see Isa 7:14, Isa 7:15; Isa 53:3); his sufferings for our sins (Isa 50:6; Isa 53:4-11); his death and burial (Isa 53:8, Isa 53:9); his victory over death (Isa 25:8; Isa 53:10, Isa 53:12); his final glory (Isa 49:7, Isa 49:22, 33; Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:4, Isa 53:5); and the establishment, increase, and perfection of his kingdom (Isa 2:2-4; Isa 9:2, Isa 9:7; Isa 11:4-10; Isa 16:5; Isa 29:18-24; Isa 32:1; Isa 40:4, Isa 40:5; Isa 42:4; Isa 46:13; Isa 49:9-13; Isa 51:3-6; Isa 53:6-10; Isa 55:1-3; Isa 59:16-21; 60; Isa 61:1-5; Isa 65:25); each specifically pointed out, and pourtrayed with the most striking and discriminating characters. It is impossible, indeed, to reflect on these, and on the whole chain of his illustrious prophecies, and not be sensible that they furnish the most incontestable evidence in support of Christianity. The style of Isaiah has been universally admired as the most perfect model of elegance and sublimity; and as distinguished for all the magnificence, and for all the sweetness of the Hebrew language.

TSK: Isaiah 7 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Isa 7:1, Ahaz, being troubled with fear of Rezin and Pekah, is comforted by Isaiah; Isa 7:10, Ahaz, having liberty to choose a sign, and refusing it, hath for a sign, Christ promised; Isa 7:17, His judgment is prophesied to come by Assyria.

Poole: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

THE ARGUMENT

THE teachers of the ancient church were of two sorts:

1. Ordinary, the priests and Levites.

2. Extraordinary, the prophets. These were immediately called by God, and inspired, as with other singular gifts and graces, so particularly with a supernatural knowledge of Divine mysteries, and of future things, and invested by God with an authority superior not only to the ordinary teachers of the church, but in some sort even to the civil powers of the nation. These holy prophets, whose writings are contained in the sacred Scripture, are sixteen. Of these Isaiah is first in place, and, as may seem probable, in time also. But undoubtedly he was contemporary with Hosea, whom others suppose to have been before him. Compare Isa 1:1 , with Hos 1:1 . The Jews tell us that he was of the blood royal of Judah, which is uncertain. But undoubtedly he was the prince of all the prophets, whether we consider the great extent and variety of his prophecies, the excellency and sublimity of those mysteries which were revealed to him and by him, the majesty and elegancy of his style, or the incomparable liveliness and power of his sermons. He doth so evidently and fully describe the person, and offices, and sufferings, and kingdom of Christ, that some of the ancients called him the fifth evangelist. And it is observed, that there are more testimonies and quotations in the New Testament taken out of Isaiah than out of all the other prophets.

Poole: Isaiah 7 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 7

Ahaz, afraid of Rezin and Pekah, is comforted by Isaiah Isa 7:1-9 ; refusing to choose a sign, Christ is promised for one, Isa 7:10-16 : his judgment should come by Assyria, Isa 7:17-25 .

MHCC: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

Isaiah prophesied in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He has been well called the evangelical prophet, on account of his numerous and full prophesies concerning the coming and character, the ministry and preaching, the sufferings and death of the Messiah, and the extent and continuance of his kingdom. Under the veil of the deliverance from Babylon, Isaiah points to a much greater deliverance, which was to be effected by the Messiah; and seldom does he mention the one, without alluding at the same time to the other; nay, he is often so much enraptured with the prospect of the more distant deliverance, as to lose sight of that which was nearer, and to dwell on the Messiah's person, office, character, and kingdom.

MHCC: Isaiah 7 (Chapter Introduction)

(Isa 7:1-9) Ahaz threatened by Israel and Syria; and is assured their attack would be in vain.

(Isa 7:10-16) God gives a sure sign by the promise of the long-expected Messiah.

(Isa 7:17-25) The folly and sin of seeking relief from Assyria are reproved.

Matthew Henry: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of The Book of the Prophet Isaiah

Prophet is a title that sounds very great to those that understand it, though, in the eye of the world, many of those that were dignified with it appeared very mean. A prophet is one that has a great intimacy with Heaven and a great interest there, and consequently a commanding authority upon earth. Prophecy is put for all divine revelation (2Pe 1:20, 2Pe 1:21), because that was most commonly by dreams, voices, or visions, communicated to prophets first, and by them to the children of men, Num 12:6. Once indeed God himself spoke to all the thousands of Israel from the top of Mount Sinai; but the effect was so intolerably dreadful that they entreated God would for the future speak to them as he had done before, by men like themselves, whose terror should not make them afraid, nor their hands be heavy upon them, Job 33:7. God approved the motion ( they have well said, says he, Deu 5:27, Deu 5:28), and the matter was then settled by consent of parties, that we must never expect to hear from God any more in that way, but by prophets, who received their instructions immediately from God, with a charge to deliver them to his church. Before the sacred canon of the Old Testament began to be written there were prophets, who were instead of Bibles to the church. Our Saviour seems to reckon Abel among the prophets, Mat 23:31, Mat 23:35. Enoch was a prophet; and by him that was first in prediction which is to be last in execution - the judgment of the great day. Jud 1:14, Behold, the Lord comes with his holy myriads. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. God said of Abraham, He is a prophet, Gen 20:7. Jacob foretold things to come, Gen 49:1. Nay, all the patriarchs are called prophets. Psa 105:15, Do my prophets no harm. Moses was, beyond all comparison, the most illustrious of all the Old Testament prophets, for with him the Lord spoke face to face, Deu 34:10. He was the first writing prophet, and by his hand the first foundations of holy writ were laid. Even those that were called to be his assistants in the government had the spirit of prophecy, such a plentiful effusion was there of that spirit at that time, Num 11:25. But after the death of Moses, for some ages, the Spirit of the Lord appeared and acted in the church of Israel more as a martial spirit than as a spirit of prophecy, and inspired men more for acting than speaking. I mean in the time of the judges. We find the Spirit of the Lord coming upon Othniel, Gideon, Samson, and others, for the service of their country, with their swords, not with their pens. Messages were then sent from heaven by angels, as to Gideon and Manoah, and to the people, Jdg 2:1. In all the book of judges there is never once mention of a prophet, only Deborah is called a prophetess. Then the word of the Lord was precious; there was no open vision, 1Sa 3:1. They had the law of Moses, recently written; let them study that. But in Samuel prophecy revived, and in him a famous epocha, or period of the church began, a time of great light in a constant uninterrupted succession of prophets, till some time after the captivity, when the canon of the Old Testament was completed in Malachi, and then prophecy ceased for nearly 400 years, till the coming of the great prophet and his forerunner. Some prophets were divinely inspired to write the histories of the church. But they did not put their names to their writings; they only referred for proof to the authentic records of those times, which were known to be drawn up by prophets, as Gad, Iddo, etc. David and others were prophets, to write sacred songs for the use of the church. After them we often read of prophets sent on particular errands, and raised up for special public services, among whom the most famous were Elijah and Elisha in the kingdom of Israel. But none of these put their prophecies in writing, nor have we any remains of them but some fragments in the histories of their times; there was nothing of their own writing (that I remember) but one epistle of Elijah's, 2Ch 21:12. But towards the latter end of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, it pleased God to direct his servants the prophets to write and publish some of their sermons, or abstracts of them. The dates of many of their prophecies are uncertain, but the earliest of them was in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and Jeroboam the second, his contemporary, king of Israel, about 200 years before the captivity, and not long after Joash had slain Zechariah the son of Jehoiada in the courts of the temple. If they begin to murder the prophets, yet they shall not murder their prophecies; these shall remain as witnesses against them. Hosea was the first of the writing prophets; and Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, published their prophecies about the same time. Isaiah began some time after, and not long; but his prophecy is placed first, because it is the largest of them all, and has most in it of him to whom all the prophets bore witness; and indeed so much of Christ that he is justly styled the Evangelical Prophet, and, by some of the ancients, a fifth Evangelist. We shall have the general title of this book (Isa 1:1) and therefore shall here only observe some things,

I. Concerning the prophet himself. He was (if we may believe the tradition of the Jews) of the royal family, his father being (they say) brother to king Uzziah. He was certainly much at court, especially in Hezekiah's time, as we find in his story, to which many think it is owing that his style is more curious and polite than that of some other of the prophets, and, in some places, exceedingly lofty and soaring. The Spirit of God sometimes served his own purpose by the particular genius of the prophet; for prophets were not speaking trumpets, through which the Spirit spoke, but speaking men, by whom the Spirit spoke, making use of their natural powers, in respect both of light and flame, and advancing them above themselves.

II. Concerning the prophecy. It is transcendently excellent and useful; it was so to the church of God then, serving for conviction of sin, direction in duty, and consolation in trouble. Two great distresses of the church are here referred to, and comfort prescribed in reference to them, that by Sennacherib's invasion, which happened in his own time, and that of the captivity in Babylon, which happened long after; and in the supports and encouragements laid up for each of these times of need we find abundance of the grace of the gospel. There are not so many quotations in the gospels out of any, perhaps not out of all, the prophecies of the Old Testament, as out of this; nor such express testimonies concerning Christ, witness that of his being born of a virgin (ch. 7) and that of his sufferings, Isa 53:1-12. The beginning of this book abounds most with reproofs for sin and threatenings of judgment; the latter end of it is full of wood words and comfortable words. This method the Spirit of Christ took formerly in the prophets and does still, first to convince and then to comfort; and those that would be blessed with the comforts must submit to the convictions. Doubtless Isaiah preached many sermons, and delivered many messages to the people, which are not written in this book, as Christ did; and probably these sermons were delivered more largely and fully than they are here related, but so much is left on record as Infinite Wisdom thought fit to convey to us on whom the ends of the world have come; and these prophecies, as well as the histories of Christ, are written that we might believe on the name of the Son of God, and that, believing, we might have life through his name; for to us is the gospel here preached as well as unto those that lived then, and more clearly. O that it may be mixed with faith!

Matthew Henry: Isaiah 7 (Chapter Introduction)

This chapter is an occasional sermon, in which the prophet sings both of mercy and judgment to those that did not perceive or understand either; he piped unto them, but they danced not, mourned unto them, but they wept not. Here is, I. The consternation that Ahaz was in upon an attempt of the confederate forces of Syria and Israel against Jerusalem (Isa 7:1, Isa 7:2). II. The assurance which God, by the prophet, sent him for his encouragement, that the attempt should be defeated and Jerusalem should be preserved (Isa 7:3-9). III. The confirmation of this by a sign which God gave to Ahaz, when he refused to ask one, referring to Christ, and our redemption by him (Isa 7:10-16). IV. A threatening of the great desolation that God would bring upon Ahaz and his kingdom by the Assyrians, notwithstanding their escape from this present storm, because they went on still in their wickedness (Isa 7:17-25). And this is written both for our comfort and for our admonition.

Constable: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title and writer

The title of this book of the Bible, as is true of the other prophetical books, comes from its writer. The book claims to have come from Isaiah (1:1; 2:1; 7:3; 13:1; 20:2; 37:2, 6, 21; 38:1, 4, 21; 39:3, 5, 8), and Jesus Christ and the apostles quoted him as being the writer at least 21 times, more often than they quoted all the other writing prophets combined.¹ The name of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, is the only one connected with the book in any of the Hebrew manuscripts or ancient versions. Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote at the end of the first century A.D., believed that Isaiah wrote this book. He said that Cyrus read the prophecies that Isaiah had written about him and wished to fulfill them.²

There is no record of any serious scholar doubting the Isaianic authorship of the entire book before the twelfth century when Ibn Ezra, a Jewish commentator, did so. With the rise of rationalism, however, some German scholars took the lead in questioning it in the late eighteenth century. They claimed that the basis for their new view was the differences in style, content, and emphases in the various parts of the prophecy. Many scholars have noted that it is not really the text itself that argues for multiple authorship as much as the presence of predictive prophecy in chapters 40-66, which antisupernaturalistic critics try to explain away.³ At first, there seemed to these critics to have been two writers whose respective emphases on judgment in chapters 1-39 and consolation in chapters 40-66 pointed to two separate writers, Isaiah and "Deutero-Isaiah." With further study, a theory of three writers ("Trito-Isaiah") emerged because of the differences between chapters 40-55 and 56-66. These critics sensed addresses to three different historical settings in these three parts of the book: Isaiah's lifetime (ca. 739-701 B.C.; chs. 1-39), the Babylonian exile (ca. 605-539 B.C.; chs. 40-55), and the return (ca. 539-400 B.C.; chs. 56-66).⁴

"Along with what is known as the JEDP theory of the origins of the Pentateuch, the belief in the multiple authorship of the book of Isaiah is one of the most generally accepted dogmas of biblical higher criticism today."⁵

However, internal and external evidence points to the unity of authorship. The title for God, "holy one of Israel," which reflects the deep impression that Isaiah's vision in chapter 6 made on him, occurs 12 times in chapters 1-39 and 14 times in chapters 40-66 but only seven times elsewhere in the entire Old Testament. Other key phrases, passages, words, themes, and motifs likewise appear in both parts of the book. Jewish tradition uniformly attributed the entire book to Isaiah as did Christian tradition until the eighteenth century. The Isaiah Dead Sea Scroll, the oldest copy of Isaiah that we have, dating from the second century B.C., has chapter 40 beginning in the same column in which chapter 39 ends.⁶

Isaiah was arguably the greatest of four prophets who lived and wrote toward the end of the eighth century. Amos and Hosea ministered in the northern kingdom of Israel at this time, and Micah and Isaiah served in Judah.⁷ Isaiah's name, "The Lord (Yahweh) is salvation," meaning the Lord is the source of salvation, symbolized his message.

". . . in that one name is compressed the whole contents of the book!"⁸

Isaiah lived in Jerusalem, and that capital city features prominently in his prophecies. His easy access to the court and Judah's kings, revealed in his book, suggests that he ministered to the kings of Judah and may have had royal blood in his veins. Jewish tradition made him the cousin of King Uzziah. His communication gifts and his political connections, whatever those may have been, gave him an opportunity to reach the whole nation of Judah. The prophet was married and had at least two sons to whom he gave names that also summarized major themes of his prophecies (8:18): Shearjashub (a remnant shall return, 7:3), and Maher-shalal-hash-baz (hastening to the spoil, 8:3).

Isaiah received his call to prophetic ministry in the year that King Uzziah died (740 B.C.; ch. 6). He responded enthusiastically to this privilege even though he knew from the outset that his ministry would be fruitless and discouraging (6:9-13). His wife was a prophetess (8:3) probably in the sense that she was married to a prophet; we have no record that she prophesied herself. Isaiah also trained a group of disciples who gathered around him (8:16). His vision of God, which he received at the beginning of his ministry, profoundly influenced Isaiah's whole view of life as well as his prophecies, as is clear from what he wrote.⁹

The prophet had a very broad appreciation of the political situation in which he lived. He demonstrated awareness of all the nations around his homeland. Judah and Jerusalem were the focal points of his prophecies, but he saw God's will for them down the corridors of time as well as in his own day. He saw that the kingdom that God would establish through His Messiah would include all people. He was a true patriot who denounced evils in his land as well as giving credit where that was due. He condemned religious cults yet remained neutral politically. His understanding of theology was profound. He set forth the wonder and grandeur of Yahweh more ably than any other biblical writer. As a writer, Isaiah is without a peer among the Old Testament prophets. He was a poetic artist who employed a large vocabulary and many literary devices to express his thoughts beautifully and powerfully. Most of his prophecies appear to have been messages that he delivered, which means that he was probably also a powerful orator.

There is no historical record of Isaiah's death. Jewish tradition held that he suffered martyrdom under King Manasseh (697-642 B.C.) because of his prophesying. The early church father Justin Martyr (ca. A.D. 150) wrote that the Jews sawed him to death with a wooden saw (cf. Heb. 11:37).¹⁰ Another ancient source says he took refuge in a hollow tree, but his persecutors discovered and extracted him. This may account for the unusual method of his execution.

Historical Background and Date

Isaiah ministered during the reigns of four Judean kings (1:1): Uzziah (792-740 B.C.), Jotham (750-732 B.C.), Ahaz (735-715 B.C.), and Hezekiah (715-686 B.C.).¹¹ The prophet began his ministry in the year that King Uzziah (or Azariah) died, namely, 740 or 739 B.C. (6:1).

During Uzziah's reign Judah enjoyed peace because of her surrounding nations' lack of antagonism and hostility. However, in 745 B.C. Tiglath-pileser III mounted the throne of Assyria and began to expand his empire. His three successors (Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, and Sennacherib) proved equally ambitious. Aram (Syria) and Israel (Ephraim) felt the pressure of Assyrian expansion before Judah did, but in King Ahaz's reign Judah had to make a crucial decision regarding her relationship to Assyria. Isaiah played a major role in that decision.

A second major crisis arose during the reign of King Hezekiah. By this time Babylon had defeated Assyria, and it was also expanding aggressively in Judah's direction. Again Isaiah played a major part in the decision about how Judah would respond to this threat.

". . . Isaiah exercised his prophetic ministry at a time of unique significance, a time in which it was of utmost importance to realize that salvation could not be obtained by reliance upon man but only from God Himself. For Israel it was the central or pivotal point of history between Moses and Christ. The old world was passing and an entirely new order of things was beginning to make its appearance. Where would Israel stand in that new world? Would she be the true theocracy, the light to lighten the Gentiles, or would she fall into the shadow by turning for help to the nations which were about her?"¹²

Sennacherib outlived Hezekiah, who died in 686 B.C., and Isaiah recorded the death of Sennacherib in 681 B.C. (37:38). Just how long the prophet ministered after that event is impossible to determine, but he must have prophesied for at least 60 years. However the bulk of the material in his book derives from the first 50 of those years (ca. 740-690 B.C.).

Important dates for Isaiah
Years	Events
745	Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria begins his reign
740	Uzziah of Judah dies; Isaiah begins his ministry
735	Ahaz of Judah begins his co-regency with Jotham; Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Aramea ally against Assyria
733-32	Tiglath-pileser invades Aramea and Israel
732	Damascus falls; Pekah and Rezin die; Jotham dies
727	Tiglath-pileser dies
722	Samaria falls; Shalmaneser V of Assyria dies and Sargon II begins to reign
715	Ahaz dies and Hezekiah begins his reign
711	Sargon attacks Ashdod and returns to Assyria
710	Sargon attacks Babylon
705	Sargon dies
701	Sennacherib of Assyria defeats Egypt at Eltekah and departs from Jerusalem; Merodach-baladan of Babylon sends messengers to visit Hezekiah
697	Manasseh of Judah begins his co-regency
690	Tirhakah of Egypt begins his reign
689	Sennacherib of Assyria defeats Babylon
686	Hezekiah dies
681	Sennacherib of Assyria dies and Esarhaddon begins to reign
671	Esarhaddon imports foreigners into Israel and defeats Egypt
612	Nineveh falls to Babylon
609	Nabopolassar of Babylon defeats Assyria and Assyria falls
605	Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeats Egypt at Carchemish; first deportation of Judahites to Babylon
597	Second deportation of Judahites to Babylon
586	Jerusalem falls to Nebuchadnezzar
559	Cyrus II of Persia begins to reign
539	Cyrus overthrows Babylon
538	Cyrus issues his decree allowing Jews to return to Palestine
530	Cyrus dies
518	Darius Hystaspes of Persia destroys Babylon

Audience and purpose

Isaiah ministered and wrote to the people of Jerusalem and Judah. His task was to explain to these chosen people that the old world order was passing away and that the new order, controlled by Gentile world empires that sought to swallow Judah up, required a new commitment to trust and obey Yahweh as His servant. The Assyrian threat called for this new dedication. This was a theological even more than a historical and political crisis for Judah. It raised many questions that Isaiah addressed.

"Is God truly the Sovereign of history if the godless nations are stronger than God's nation? Does might make right? What is the role of God's people in the world? Does divine judgment mean divine rejection? What is the nature of trust? What is the future of the Davidic monarchy? Are not the idols stronger than God and therefore superior to him?"¹³

The far-reaching nature of these questions called for reference to the future, which Isaiah revealed from the Lord. The Northern Kingdom had made the wrong commitment, which Amos announced, but the Southern Kingdom still had an opportunity to trust Yahweh and live.

"Stated briefly, the purpose of Isaiah is to display God's glory and holiness through His judgment of sin and His deliverance and blessing of a righteous remnant."¹⁴

Theology

The Book of Isaiah, the third longest book in the Bible after Psalms and Jeremiah, deals with as broad a range of theology as any book in the Old Testament. In this respect it is similar to Romans. However, there are four primary doctrines, all arising out of the prophet's personal experience with God in his call (ch. 6), that receive the most emphasis. These are God, man and the world, sin, and redemption.

Isaiah presented God as great, transcendently separate, authoritative, omnipotent, majestic, holy, and morally and ethically perfect. In contrast, he described sarcastically the stupidity of idolatry. God creates history as well as the cosmos, and He has a special relationship with Israel among the nations. The adjective "holy" (Heb. qadosh) describes God 33 times in Isaiah and only 26 times in the rest of the Old Testament. It is the primary attribute of God that this prophet stressed.

Isaiah showed the tremendous value that God places on humanity and the world but also the folly of pride and unbelief. Assuming pretensions to significance leads to insignificance for the creation, but giving true significance to God results in glory for humanity and the world. As all the other eighth-century prophets, Isaiah condemned injustice.

Sin is rebellion for Isaiah that springs from pride. The book begins and ends on this note (1:2; 66:24). All the evil in the world results from man's refusal to accept Yahweh's lordship. The prophet repeatedly showed how foolish such rebellion is. It not only affects man himself but also his environment. God's response to sin is judgment if people continue to rebel against Him, but He responds with redemption if they abandon self-trust and depend on Him. Sin calls for repentance, and forgiveness for the penitent is available.

God's judgment, the outworking of the personal rage of offended deity, takes many forms: natural disaster, military defeat, and disease being a few, but they all come from God's hand ultimately. The means of salvation can only be through God's activity. Substitutionary atonement makes possible God's announcement of pardon and redemption. This redemption comes through the promised Messiah ultimately, the Lord's anointed king. The goal of redemption is not just deliverance from sin's guilt but the sharing of God's character and fellowship. Salvation could only come to God's people as they accepted the role of servant. Deliverance cannot come to man through his own effort, but he must look to God alone for it. His emphasis on salvation has earned Isaiah the title of evangelist of the Old Testament.

Isaiah is strongly eschatological. In many passages the prophet dealt with the future destiny of Israel and the Gentiles. He wrote more than any other prophet of the great kingdom into which the Israelites would enter under Messiah's rule.

"We stand precisely on 56:1, looking back to the work of the Servant (now fulfilled in the person, life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus) and looking forward to the coming of the Anointed Conqueror."¹⁵

Isaiah's emphasis on the coming Messiah is second only to the Psalms in the Old Testament in terms of its fullness and variety. God revealed more about the coming Messiah to Isaiah than He did to any other Old Testament character. Messianic themes in Isaiah include the branch, the stone (refuge), light, child, king, and especially servant. In some of the passages in Isaiah, Israel is the servant of the Lord that is in view, in others the faithful remnant in Israel is the servant, and in still others a future individual, the Messiah, must be in view. As Matthew clarified, Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of what God intended the Israelites to be (Matt. 2:15; cf. Hos. 11:1-2).

"What is the overarching theme of OT theology? Perhaps it is the covenant. Here in Isaiah, God's special relationship with Israel is presupposed throughout. Perhaps it is the kingdom of God. The whole structure of the book brings out the implications of God's sovereign control of things in the interests of his kingdom. Perhaps it is promise and fulfillment. Here we see time and again the word of divine authority being fulfilled and further fulfillment thereby pledged. Perhaps it is simply God himself, Israel's Holy One. This book is one long exposition of the implications--for Israel and the world--of who and what he is. So this great prophecy--its whole structure unified by its teaching about the Holy One of Israel, who is true to his word, faithful to his covenant, and pursues the establishment of his kingdom--is a classic disclosure of the very heart of the OT faith."¹⁶

"The theological message of the book may be summarized as follows: The Lord will fulfill His ideal for Israel by purifying His people through judgment and then restoring them to a renewed covenantal relationship. He will establish Jerusalem (Zion) as the center of His worldwide kingdom and reconcile once hostile nations to Himself."¹⁷

Genre and interpretation

The book is a compilation of the visions that Isaiah received from the Lord. He presented this revelation as messages and compiled them into their present form. His disciples may have put finishing touches on the collection under divine inspiration. Most of the book is poetic in form, the prophet having been lifted up in his spirit as he beheld and recorded what God revealed to him. Much of the content is eschatological and therefore prophetic, though most of the ministry of the prophets, including Isaiah, was forth telling rather than foretelling. Much of what is eschatological is also apocalyptic, dealing with the final climax of history in the future. These portions bear the marks of that type of literature: symbols, analogies, and various figures of speech.¹⁸

Students of Isaiah have difficulty understanding the eschatological portions of the book. Some believe that we should look for a literal fulfillment of everything predicted. Others believe that when Isaiah spoke of Israel and Jerusalem he was referring to the church. More literal interpretation results in a premillennial understanding of prophecy whereas spiritualization results in an amillennial or postmillennial understanding. The problem with taking every prophecy literally is that in many places the prophet used metaphors and other figures of speech to describe his meaning; what he wrote does not describe exactly what he meant. The problem with spiritualizing all the prophecies is that the New Testament teaches that Israel will have a future in God's plans as Israel (Rom. 11:26-27). The church will not replace Israel though the church does participate in some of the blessing promised to Israel. The most satisfying position, for me, is to interpret Isaiah as literally as seems legitimate in view of other divine revelation while at the same time remembering that some of what appears to be literal description may in fact be metaphorical. This is the approach taken by most premillennialists.

"Surely God may be expected to have one basic meaning in what he says. This is true, but just as human speech, especially when it is poetical, may suggest further levels of significance beyond the meaning conveyed by the passage in its context, so may the Word of God."¹⁹

Structure

Occasional time references scattered throughout the book indicate that Isaiah arranged his prophecies in a basically chronological order (cf. 6:1; 7:1; 14:28; 20:1; 36:1; 37:38). However, they are not completely chronological. More fundamentally, Isaiah arranged his prophecies as an anthology in harmony with a unifying principle. That organizing principle seems to be that God's people should view all of life in the light of God's reality and should therefore orient themselves to Him appropriately, namely, as His servants.

Isaiah built a huge mosaic out of his prophecies and used pre-exilic material to serve pre-exilic, exilic, post-exilic, and eschatological ends. It is not unreasonable to assume that after Isaiah had completed what we now have in chapters 1-39 he received new revelations from God along a different line that led him to adopt the somewhat different style that is characteristic of the last part of the book. The first part deals primarily with the threat of Assyria and the second (chs. 40-66) with that of Babylonia, with chapters 36-39 forming a transition. Chapters 1-5 are an introduction to the whole collection of messages. Chapters 6 and 53 are the key chapters because they provide the most concise answers to the great questions raised in the book. The book contains many extended doublets: repetition of the same truth in the same consecutive steps.

Message²⁰

In contrast to the New Testament prophets, Isaiah had very little to say about an individual's relationship with God. His concern was more the relationship of God's people as a whole to the Lord, specifically the nation of Israel's relationship to God. This is true of most of the Old Testament writing prophets. Isaiah focused on Israel's past, her present, her near future, and her distant future. He also gave considerable attention to the fate of the Gentile nations.

In the first section of the book, Isaiah insists that judgment is necessary before there can be peace. He was not referring to judgment beyond this life, judgment when we die. He was dealing with judgment here and now, repentance and divine intervention. Peace on earth requires repentance and divine intervention.

In the last section of the book, Isaiah also stressed the importance of righteousness before there can be peace, righteousness here and now before there can be peace on earth in the future. Thus this emphasis on righteousness and peace acts as bookends and frames the content of Isaiah's prophecies.

The great value of Isaiah is its revelation of the throne of God. This book clarifies the principles by which God rules the universe. In chapter six, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on His throne. This vision of God impacted the rest of Isaiah's ministry and the rest of his book. In chapter 53, the prophet revealed the Servant of the Lord in whom and through whom God reigns. Isaiah balanced the transcendence of God with the immanence of God. These great revelations of Isaiah come together in the Revelation of John, 5:6: "And I saw between the throne and the elders a Lamb standing." Revelation gives more revelation along the same lines that Isaiah gave earlier. God reigns through people, especially one crucial person. Isaiah had much to say about the coming Messiah throughout this book.

Isaiah lived the early part of his life under the reign of King Uzziah. Uzziah was a good king, and he provided stability for the kingdom of Judah. But when Uzziah died, everyone had questions about the direction Judah would go. It was in the year that King Uzziah died that Isaiah saw his vision of the throne in heaven (6:1). He realized in a deeper way than ever before that the true king of Judah was Yahweh and that Yahweh was still firmly on His throne.

There are two things that mark God's throne: government and grace. Isaiah's contemporaries needed a deeper appreciation of God's government and His grace, and so do all the readers of this book. The fact that Yahweh rules and that He rules graciously were truths that were very familiar to God's people in Isaiah's time. In fact, when Isaiah spoke of God's government and His grace the Israelites mocked him for presenting such a simple message. Their taste ran to the more esoteric, and Isaiah's repetition of basic truth bored them. God told his prophet to expect rejection, and that proved to be Israel's characteristic response to Isaiah's ministry.

We also need a reminder of the basic principles of God's government and His grace. It is not because they are unknown to us but because people do not heed these truths that they are so needful today.

Let's consider first what Isaiah revealed about the government of God.

There are three principles by which God governs. These are holiness, righteousness, and justice. Holiness is the inspiration, righteousness the activity, and justice the result of God's government.

The most outstanding characteristic of God that this book reveals is His holiness. The title "the Holy One of Israel" was Isaiah's hallmark. The angelic beings that Isaiah saw assembled around God's heavenly throne ascribed perfect holiness to Him: "Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of Hosts" (6:3). The holiness of God describes His "otherliness" from all His creation. God is different in His essence; He is spirit, whereas the creation is material. He is also different in His morality; He is absolutely upright, in contrast to the creation that has suffered from the Fall and its contacts with sin. When Isaiah saw the Lord, in chapter 6, what impressed him was his own uncleanness and the uncleanness of his people. All of God's government, how He governs, derives from His holiness. His holiness inspires all His government.

Because God is holy, He always does what is right. Conduct issues from and reflects character. Because God is holy in His character, He conducts Himself in righteousness. He always does what is right. There is a strong emphasis on righteousness in Isaiah, God's righteousness and the need for human righteousness. Isaiah's emphasis on righteousness is one of the reasons his book has been called the Romans of the Old Testament.

The result of righteous conduct is justice. God deals with His own people and all other people in justice. A holy God can do nothing else. He will do what is fair, what is straight, what is proper. We can see the justice of God in God's call to His people to reason with Him (1:18). Because God is just, sin inevitably brings punishment. Much of this prophecy is designed to help the people of God know how to avoid sin and its punishment and how to manage sin and its punishment. Justice in interpersonal and international affairs is an important motif in Isaiah.

Whereas the principles of God's government are holiness, righteousness, and justice, the methods by which He governs are revelation, explanation, and prediction.

According to Isaiah, the outstanding characteristic of God that distinguishes Him from all false gods (idols) is that He has revealed Himself; He has spoken. Isaiah referred to three primary revelations of God to humankind: general revelation, special revelation, and incarnate revelation. God has built a revelation of Himself into His creation so that everyone can see that a true God does exist (cf. Rom. 1). Second, He revealed His will as well as His existence. The revelation of His will came to the Israelites through what God taught them, the Torah (instruction). This revelation is what we have in Scripture, and it came to Israel for Israel to share with the world for the world's blessing, not to hoard to herself for her own blessing. Third, God revealed Himself through a person: the Messiah, the Servant of the Lord, the Divine Warrior. The revelation of how God would deal with the sin problem came through this person. Isaiah reveals that God would deliver Israel from destruction, from captivity, and from sin. He would make her in the future the servant of His that He always intended her to be but which she failed to become because of her sin.

God went beyond just giving revelations, however. He also provided explanations. This was one of the major ministries of the prophets in general and of Isaiah in particular. God explained through Isaiah why the Israelites and their neighbor nations were experiencing what they were going through. He gave these explanations so they could learn from their past, walk in His ways in the present, and enjoy His blessings in the future. God explained that He not only had the ability to save Israel, but He also had the desire to do so.

Not only did God explain the past, He also predicted the future. He did this to prove that He is the only true God. In order to predict the future accurately, one must be able to control the future. Yahweh is the only true God. He is the only God who can create history in time as well as creating the material world in space. His ability to predict the future is the great testimony to His unique sovereignty. The outstanding predictions in this book concern those whom God would anoint for special ministries in the future. These individuals were Cyrus, who would be Israel's redeemer from Babylon's captivity, and the Servant, who would be Israel's redeemer from sin's captivity. The exodus motif is strong throughout Isaiah looking back to the Exodus from Egypt and forward to future exoduses.

The characteristics of God's government as revealed in Isaiah are also three: patience, persistence, and power.

God deals with people patiently. He allows them the opportunity to repent and to return to Himself. There is much emphasis in this book on the importance of returning to God. God had been very patient with Judah, but the day of His patience would end, so she needed to repent while there was still opportunity. The day of salvation would not last forever.

Second, God deals with people persistently. He does not disregard people's sin after a time, but He always deals with it righteously. Likewise He persists in blessing those who faithfully follow Him even though they live among a nation of apostates. God has a plan for Israel as a nation, and He also had a plan for the faithful among the apostates in the nation. His faithfulness to His promises is the mainspring that keeps the hands of His providence moving persistently.

Third, God ever demonstrates His supernatural power. What is natural does not bind Him. He can and does intervene to provide power that overcomes His sinful people and holds them in captivity. The expectation of more exoduses is strong throughout this book. Isaiah's audience looked forward to captivity in Babylon, but beyond that there was the promise of liberation, and beyond that there was the promise of liberation from sin. Fire is a fitting symbol of all these characteristics of God's government. It consumes patiently, it persists until it has run its full course, and it has great power. Isaiah pictured Yahweh as a consuming fire in relation to His people as well as in relation to unbelieving nations.

Parallel to these emphases on the government of God is an equally strong emphasis on the grace of God in Isaiah.

Along with the holiness, righteousness, and justice of God, we have an equally strong emphasis on the love, mercy, and goodness of God. Isaiah wrote that God's children had rebelled against Him. His wife had been unfaithful to Him. Those He had chosen to bless uniquely among all the nations of the earth had grieved His Holy Spirit. The breaking heart of God is as clear a revelation in Isaiah as are the broken commandments of God.

Similarly, God's revelations, His explanations, and His predictions arise out of His mercy. God has revealed Himself in nature so everyone can enter into relationship with a gracious God. He has explained Himself so His people can understand His dealings with them as being gracious. He has predicted the future so everyone will appreciate that His plans for humanity are gracious plans involving redemption from captivity and sin.

God's grace is the reason He is patient with people. His grace is the inspiration for His persistence with people. And His grace is the passion of His power on behalf of people. In short, all the outstanding characteristics of God in Isaiah trace back to His goodness. The Servant Songs, particularly the third one (52:13-53:12), overflow with the grace of God for His helpless and hopeless people. He is the key to their justification, sanctification, and glorification. Note again the similarity with Romans.

The living message of this book is that acknowledgment of God's sovereign rule is the key to successful human life on every level: individually, nationally, and historically. The only hope for human failure caused by enslavement to sin is divine redemption that a God of grace provides. God is not only able but also willing to save.

To enjoy the benefits of God's grace, people must submit to His government. To submit to His government, they must receive the benefits of His grace. Israel failed to enjoy the benefits of God's grace because she failed to submit to His rule. She failed to submit to His rule because she failed to trust His grace. God brings us into right relationship with His government through His grace. In order to enjoy the benefits of His grace, we must submit to His government. Both government and grace find their source in Yahweh and their expression in Jesus Christ.

Constable: Isaiah (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction chs. 1-5

A. Israel's condition and God's solution ch. 1

1. The title of the book 1:1

2. Israel's condition 1:2-9

3. God's solution 1:10-20

4. Israel's response 1:21-31

B. The problem with Israel chs. 2-4

1. God's desire for Israel 2:1-4

2. God's discipline of Israel 2:5-4:1

3. God's determination for Israel 4:2-6

C. The analogy of wild grapes ch. 5

1. The song of the vineyard 5:1-7

2. The wildness of the grapes 5:8-25

3. The coming destruction 5:26-30

II. Isaiah's vision of God ch. 6

A. The prophet's vision 6:1-8

B. The prophet's commission 6:9-13

III. Israel's crisis of faith chs. 7-39

A. The choice between trusting God or Assyria chs. 7-12

1. Signs of God's presence 7:1-9:7

2. Measurement by God's standards 9:8-10:4

3. Hope of God's deliverance 10:5-11:16

4. Trust in God's favor ch. 12

B. God's sovereignty over the nations chs. 13-35

1. Divine judgments on the nations chs. 13-23

2. Divine victory over the nations chs. 24-27

3. The folly of trusting the nations chs. 28-33

4. The consequences of Israel's trust chs. 34-35

C. Tests of Israel's trust chs. 36-39

1. The Assyrian threat chs. 36-37

2. The Babylonian threat chs. 38-39

IV. Israel's calling in the world chs. 40-55

A. God's grace to Israel chs. 40-48

1. The Lord of the servant ch. 40

2. The servant of the Lord chs. 41:1-44:22

3. The Lord's redemption of His servant chs. 44:23-47:15

4. The servant's attention to her Lord ch. 48

B. God's atonement for Israel chs. 49-55

1. Anticipation of salvation 49:1-52:12

2. Announcement of salvation 52:13-53:12

3. Invitation to salvation chs. 54-55

V. Israel's future transformation chs. 56-66

A. Recognition of human inability chs. 56-59

1. The need for humility and holiness chs. 56-57

2. The relationship of righteousness and ritual chs. 58-59

B. Revelation of future glory chs. 60-62

1. Israel among the nations ch. 60

2. Israel under the Lord chs. 61-62

C. Recognition of divine ability chs. 63-66

1. God's faithfulness in spite of Israel's unfaithfulness 63:1-65:16

2. The culmination of Israel's future 65:17-66:24

Constable: Isaiah

Isaiah

Bibliography

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Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

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Haydock: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAS.

INTRODUCTION.

This inspired writer is called by the Holy Ghost, (Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 25.) the great prophet; from the greatness of his prophetic spirit, by which he hath foretold, so long before, and in so clear a manner, the coming of Christ, the mysteries of our redemption, the calling of the Gentiles, and the glorious establishment, and perpeutal flourishing of the Church of Christ: insomuch that he seems to have been rather an evangelist than a prophet. His very name is not without mystery: for Isaias in Hebrew signifies the salvation of the Lord, or, Jesus is the Lord. He was, according to the tradition of the Hebrews, of the blood royal of the kings of Juda; an after a most holy life, ended his days by a glorious martyrdom; being sawed in two, at the command of his wicked son-in-law, king Manasses, for reproving his evil ways. (Challoner) --- He began to prophesy ten years before the foundation of Rome, and the ruin of Ninive. His style is suitable to his high birth. He may be called the prophet of the mercies of the Lord. Under the figure of the return from captivity, he foretells the redemption of mankind (Calmet) with such perspicuity, that he might seem to be an evangelist. (St. Jerome)

Gill: Isaiah (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH

This book is called, in the New Testament, sometimes "the Book of the Words of the Prophet Esaias", Luk 3:4 sometimes only the "Prophet Esaias", Act 8:28 and sometimes, as here, the "Book of the Prophet Esaias", Luk 4:17. In the Syriac version the title is, "the Prophecy of Isaiah the Son of Amos": and in the Arabic version, "the Beginning of the Prophecy of Isaiah the Prophet". It stands first of all the prophets; though the order of the prophets, according to the Jews ^a, is, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the twelve. But it is here placed first, not because Isaiah prophesied before the other prophets; for Joel, Jonah, Hosea, and Amos, begun before him, namely, in or before the days of Jeroboam the Second; but because of the excellency of the matter contained in it. Isaiah is called by Ben Syra ^b the great prophet, and by Eusebius ^c the greatest of the prophets; and Jerom ^d a says, he should rather be called an evangelist than a prophet, since he seems rather to write a history of things past, than to prophesy of things to come; yea, he styles him an apostle, as well as an evangelist ^e: and certain it is that no one writes so fully and clearly of the person, offices, grace, and kingdom of Christ; of his incarnation and birth of a virgin; of his sufferings and death, and the glory that should follow, as he does. John, the forerunner of Christ, began his ministry with a passage out of him concerning himself, Mat 3:3. Our Lord preached his first sermon at Nazareth out of this book, Luk 4:17 and it was in this the eunuch was reading when Philip came up to him, who from the same Scripture preached to him Christ, Act 8:28. And there are more citations in the New Testament made out of this prophecy than any other book, excepting the book of Psalms, as Musculus observes. To which may be added, as another reason, the elegance and sublimity of his style in which he exceeds the greatest of orators, Demosthenes among the Greeks, and Tully among the Romans; and this is observed both by Jews and Christians. Abarbinel ^f says, that the purity, and elegance of his diction is like that of kings and counsellors, who speak more purely and elegantly than other men: hence their Rabbins, he says, compare Isaiah to a citizen, and Ezekiel to a countryman. And Jerom ^g observes, that Isaiah is so eloquent and polite, that there is nothing of rusticity in his language; and that his style is so florid, that a translation cannot preserve it. Moreover, another reason of this book being placed first may be the bulk of it; it being larger, and containing more chapters, than any of the greater prophets, and almost as many as all the lesser prophets put together. That Isaiah was the writer of this book is not to be questioned; many of the prophecies in it are by name ascribed to him, Mat 13:14 though some others might be the compilers of it, collect his prophecies, and digest them in order: so the Jews say ^h, that Hezekiah and his company wrote Isaiah, &c. At what time, and in whose days he prophesied, may be learnt from Isa 1:1 by which it appears that he prophesied long, and lived to a good old age. He began to prophesy about A. M. 3236, and about seven hundred and seventy years before Christ. Abulpharagius, an Arabic writer, says ⁱ, he lived an hundred and twenty years, eighty five of which he prophesied. It is a generally received tradition with the Jews, that he lived to the time of Manasseh, and that he was sawn asunder by him; and which has been embraced by the ancient Christian writers, and is thought to be referred to in Heb 11:37. See Gill on Heb 11:37. But Aben Ezra on Isa 1:1 observes, that had he lived to the time of Manasseh, it would have been written, and is of opinion that he died in Hezekiah's time. According to the Cippi Hebraici ^k, he was buried at Tekoah, over whose grave a beautiful monument was erected; though Epiphanius ^l, or the author of the Lives of the Prophets that go by his name, says he was buried under the oak of Rogel, near the fountain of Siloam; and it is a tradition with the Syriac writers, that his body lay hid in the waters of Siloah; See Gill on Joh 5:4 but these are things not to be depended on; and alike fabulous are all other writings ascribed to him, besides this prophecy; as what are called the ascension of Isaiah, the vision of Isaiah, and the conference of Isaiah. This book contains some things historical, but chiefly prophetic; of which some relate to the punishment of the Jews, and other nations; but for the most part are evangelical, and concern the kingdom and grace of Christ; of which some are delivered out more clearly and perspicuously, and others more obscurely, under the type of the deliverance of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity.

Gill: Isaiah 7 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 7

This chapter contains a prophecy of the preservation of the kingdom of Judah, from its enemies; a confirmation of it by a sign; and a prediction of various calamities that should come upon it, antecedent to the accomplishment of that sign. The enemies of Judea are named, and the besieging of Jerusalem by them, and the date of it, which was without effect, are mentioned, Isa 7:1 the fear and dread which seized the house of David upon the news of this confederacy, Isa 7:2 the orders given by the Lord to the Prophet Isaiah, to take with him his son, and meet Ahaz, at a certain place pointed at, Isa 7:3 whose errand was to comfort him, and exhort him to be quiet and easy; since the conspiracy formed against him should be fruitless, and the kingdom of Israel should be broken to pieces, Isa 7:4 after which the king is put upon asking a sign of the Lord, for the confirmation of it; which he refusing to do, under a pretence of tempting the Lord, is reproved; and a sign nevertheless is given; which is that of the birth of the Messiah of a virgin, who would be truly God, as his name Immanuel shows, and truly man, as his birth, his food, and gradual knowledge of good and evil, prove, Isa 7:10 yea, it is suggested that the deliverance of Judea from the two kings of Syria and Israel should be very speedy; even before the young child Isaiah had with him was capable of knowing to refuse evil, and chose good, Isa 7:16 but as a chastisement of the house of David for their incredulity in this matter, and slight of the divine goodness, various things are threatened to befall them, before the birth of the Messiah; even such as had not been since the revolt of the ten tribes; as that their enemies, the Assyrians and others, should come upon them in great numbers, and fill all places, so that they would be in the utmost distress, and not be able to escape, Isa 7:17 there would be a great consumption of men of all sorts, high and low, signified by shaving off the hair of the head, beard, and feet; so that the few that remained would enjoy plenty, Isa 7:20 and for want of men to till the land, it would be covered with thorns and briers; and because of wild beasts, the few men in it would be obliged to defend themselves with bows and arrows, Isa 7:23 and yet, after this, the land should become fruitful again, before the Messiah's coming, Isa 7:25, as some interpret it.