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?
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).91Ahaz 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.92Ahaz 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).97This 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.98In Hebrew society, an unmarried woman of marriageable age would be a virgin. Thus almahad 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 almahere. 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 almarather than bethulabecause 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 almaso 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.100The 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.102The 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
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).106Enemy 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.
Whereas the sign of Immanuel was for Ahaz primarily, the sign of Maher-shalal-hash-baz was for all the people of Judah. The preceding prophecies to Ahaz (7:10-25) are generally negative, but the following prophecies to the Judahites (8:1-10) are more positive.
Robert Chisholm, Jr., believed Maher-shalal-hash-baz was the immediate fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy of 7:14.
"The juxtaposition of the birth report narrative (8:1-8) with the birth announcement narrative (7:14-25) suggests a close relationship between the prophecy and the birth. The pattern of events (initial deliverance followed by punitive judgment) associated with the growth pattern of the child is the same in both chapters. Also, Immanuel is addressed in the conclusion of the prophecy in chapter 9 (cf. 8:8) as if He were already present on the scene. This address makes excellent sense if one understands the introduction of the same message (8:1-3) as describing his birth.
"The differing names present a problem (which, by the way, one also faces in Matthew's application of the Immanuel prophecy to the birth of Jesus). Perhaps Immanuel, understood as a symbolic name, focuses on God's involvement in Judah's history, whereas Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, the child's actual name, alludes to the specific purpose or effect of His involvement. (In the same way, when applied to Jesus, Immanuel' attests to God's personal intervention in history through the Incarnation, whereas the Lord's actual name, Jesus, indicates the specific purpose or effect of that intervention.)"107
8:1 Yahweh instructed Isaiah to take a large flat surface (Heb. gillayon) appropriate for posting as a placard. He was to write clearly on it Maher-shalal-hash-baz("speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoil").
"Soldiers would shout these words to their comrades as they defeated and plundered their foes."108
This public notice had a double purpose: to announce a coming attack on Syria and Israel and to announce the birth of Isaiah's son.
"Isaiah was to make his message as public and eye-catching as possible."109
8:2 God selected two men whom he wanted to witness this document. When the predicted events happened, they could faithfully testify that Isaiah had predicted them. One of the witnesses was Uriah. He was probably the high priest who built an altar like the one in Damascus that Ahaz had seen and set it up in place of the brazen altar (cf. 2 Kings 16:10-16). The position that this Zechariah occupied is unknown, but he must have been a prominent public figure like Uriah (cf. 2 Chron. 26:5; 29:12-13).
8:3 Then Isaiah had sexual relations with his wife.110By naming her son Immanuel she made a prophetic statement: God would be with His people in the coming crisis. When she bore a son, Yahweh told Isaiah to name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. The child's mother gave him one name and his father gave him the other.
8:4 Before the boy grew old enough to speak distinctly, Assyria (Tiglath-pileser III) would carry off the wealth of Damascus and Samaria (in 732 B.C.; cf. 7:15-16; 2 Kings 15:29). Thus Syria and Israel would not only fail in their attempt to bring Judah under their power (cf. 7:6), but the king of Assyria would bring them under his power. This second promise is almost identical to the earlier one in 7:4-9. Perhaps God intended it to be a second witness to the truthfulness of His word.
This section corresponds to 7:18-25. Both of them explain that the name to be given a child would have a positive and a negative significance.
8:5-6 Yahweh spoke to Isaiah again (cf. 8:1). King Ahaz was not the only person in Judah who had failed to trust in the Lord but had put his confidence in man. The people of Judah had been guilty of the same folly. They had rejected God's faithful provisions for them, symbolized by the gently flowing Shiloah stream that flowed from the Gihon spring just outside Jerusalem into the city. This water source was unimpressive, but it provided for the people of Jerusalem faithfully. Instead they had rejoiced in the anticipated destruction of the kings of Syria and Ephraim due to Ahaz's alliance with Assyria.
8:7 Judah's sovereign God would indeed sweep these enemies away, as the waters of the Euphrates on which Assyria's capital stood seasonally overflowed and swept away all in its path. But it would be God, not Ahaz, who would be responsible for their defeat. Assyria would not inundate God's people Israel because her gods were stronger than Yahweh, but the sovereign Lord would bring this judgment on them.
"Like Germany in 1939 and 1940, the Assyrians seemed almost superhuman. They could strike anywhere, it seemed, with speed and power."111
"The motif of the two rivers Shiloah (6) and the Euphrates (7) offers a telling contrast between the seeming weakness of faith and the seeming power of the world."112
8:8 The Assyrian tide would not stop at Syria and Israel, however, but would sweep into Judah as well.113But its waters would stop short of completely engulfing Judah; they would reach only to her neck. Israel would drown, but Judah would keep her head above water. Seen from above, the deepening waters of Assyria's army filling every valley and rising higher and higher resembled the wings of a huge, ominous bird of prey that covered the whole land. Isaiah described the whole land as Immanuel's land. Probably this is a double reference to the child predicted to be born (7:14) and to Israel as a whole, the people whose God was with them and would not allow Assyria to devour its prey.114In view of the later fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy in Jesus Christ, we have a reminder that Yahweh continued to be with His people and provided salvation for them ultimately in Christ.
8:9-10 The prophet called on the heathen nations to listen. They would be shattered even though they girded themselves for battle against God's will. They could gird themselves for battle if they would, plan their plans, and propose their proposals, but they would fall because God was with His people.115Ultimately God's people would prevail.
