Isaiah 8:10

8:10 Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted!

Issue your orders, but they will not be executed! ¹ 

For God is with us! ² 

Isaiah 14:27

14:27 Indeed, ³  the Lord who commands armies has a plan,

and who can possibly frustrate it?

His hand is ready to strike,

and who can possibly stop it? ⁴ 

Isaiah 24:5

24:5 The earth is defiled by ⁵  its inhabitants, ⁶ 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ⁷ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ⁸ 

Isaiah 33:8

33:8 Highways are empty, ⁹ 

there are no travelers. ¹⁰ 

Treaties are broken, ¹¹ 

witnesses are despised, ¹² 

human life is treated with disrespect. ¹³ 

Isaiah 44:25

44:25 who frustrates the omens of the empty talkers ¹⁴ 

and humiliates ¹⁵  the omen readers,

who overturns the counsel of the wise men ¹⁶ 

and makes their advice ¹⁷  seem foolish,

[8:10]  ¹ tn Heb “speak a word, but it will not stand.”

[8:10]  ² sn In these vv. 9-10 the tone shifts abruptly from judgment to hope. Hostile nations like Assyria may attack God’s people, but eventually they will be destroyed, for God is with his people, sometimes to punish, but ultimately to vindicate. In addition to being a reminder of God’s presence in the immediate crisis faced by Ahaz and Judah, Immanuel (whose name is echoed in this concluding statement) was a guarantee of the nation’s future greatness in fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises. Eventually God would deliver his people from the hostile nations (vv. 9-10) through another child, an ideal Davidic ruler who would embody God’s presence in a special way (see 9:6-7). Jesus the Messiah is the fulfillment of the Davidic ideal prophesied by Isaiah, the one whom Immanuel foreshadowed. Through the miracle of the incarnation he is literally “God with us.” Matthew realized this and applied Isaiah’s ancient prophecy of Immanuel’s birth to Jesus (Matt 1:22-23). The first Immanuel was a reminder to the people of God’s presence and a guarantee of a greater child to come who would manifest God’s presence in an even greater way. The second Immanuel is “God with us” in a heightened and infinitely superior sense. He “fulfills” Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy by bringing the typology intended by God to realization and by filling out or completing the pattern designed by God. Of course, in the ultimate fulfillment of the type, the incarnate Immanuel’s mother must be a virgin, so Matthew uses a Greek term (παρθένος, parqenos), which carries that technical meaning (in contrast to the Hebrew word עַלְמָה [’almah], which has the more general meaning “young woman”). Matthew draws similar analogies between NT and OT events in 2:15, 18. The linking of these passages by analogy is termed “fulfillment.” In 2:15 God calls Jesus, his perfect Son, out of Egypt, just as he did his son Israel in the days of Moses, an historical event referred to in Hos 11:1. In so doing he makes it clear that Jesus is the ideal Israel prophesied by Isaiah (see Isa 49:3), sent to restore wayward Israel (see Isa 49:5, cf. Matt 1:21). In 2:18 Herod’s slaughter of the infants is another illustration of the oppressive treatment of God’s people by foreign tyrants. Herod’s actions are analogous to those of the Assyrians, who deported the Israelites, causing the personified land to lament as inconsolably as a mother robbed of her little ones (Jer 31:15).

[14:27]  ³ tn Or “For” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[14:27]  ⁴ tn Heb “His hand is outstretched and who will turn it back?”

[24:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

[24:5]  ⁶ sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

[24:5]  ⁸ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

[33:8]  ⁷ tn Or “desolate” (NAB, NASB); NIV, NRSV, NLT “deserted.”

[33:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “the one passing by on the road ceases.”

[33:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “one breaks a treaty”; NAB “Covenants are broken.”

[33:8]  ¹⁰ tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “he despises cities.” The term עָרִים (’arim, “cities”) is probably a corruption of an original עֵדִים (’edim, “[legal] witnesses”), a reading that is preserved in the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a. Confusion of dalet (ד) and resh (ר) is a well-attested scribal error.

[33:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he does not regard human beings.”

[44:25]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew text has בַּדִּים (baddim), perhaps meaning “empty talkers” (BDB 95 s.v. III בַּד). In the four other occurrences of this word (Job 11:3; Isa 16:6; Jer 48:30; 50:36) the context does not make the meaning of the term very clear. Its primary point appears to be that the words spoken are meaningless or false. In light of its parallelism with “omen readers,” some have proposed an emendation to בָּרִים (barim, “seers”). The Mesopotamian baru-priests were divination specialists who played an important role in court life. See R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 93-98. Rather than supporting an emendation, J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:189, n. 79) suggests that Isaiah used בַּדִּים purposively as a derisive wordplay on the Akkadian word baru (in light of the close similarity of the d and r consonants).

[44:25]  ¹⁰ tn Or “makes fools of” (NIV, NRSV); NAB and NASB both similar.

[44:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “who turns back the wise” (so NRSV); NIV “overthrows the learning of the wise”; TEV “The words of the wise I refute.”

[44:25]  ¹² tn Heb “their knowledge” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).