Isaiah 7

Moab is one great fulfilled prophecy. The noble plain of Bashan is thickly studded with cities, towns and villages, intersected with roads, having one of the finest climates of the world; yet is the whole region utterly deserted, literally “without man and without beast” (Isa. 33:10). J. L. Porter (“Giant Cities of Bashan”).

13. The chapter closes with a repetition and extension of the threatening, but in such a form as to involve a promise of the highest import. While it is threatened that the stroke shall be repeated on the remnant that survives its first infliction, it is promised that there shall be such a remnant after every repetition to the last. However frequently the people may seem to be destroyed, there shall still be a surviving remnant, and however frequently that very remnant may appear to perish, there shall still be a remnant of the remnant left, and this indestructible residuum shall be the holy seed, the true Church (Rom. 11:5). This prediction was fulfilled, not once for all, but again and again; not only in the vine-dressers and husbandmen left by Nebuchadnezzar and afterward destroyed in Egypt; not only in the remnant that survived the destruction of the city by the Romans, and increased until again destroyed by Adrian; but in the present existence of the Jews as a peculiar people, notwithstanding the temptations to amalgamate with others, notwithstanding persecutions and apparent extirpations; a fact which can only be explained by the prediction that “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:26). As in many former instances throughout the history of the chosen people, under both dispensations, “even so, at this present time also, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” A.

The two most common forest trees of Palestine were the terebinth and oak. They were strong, hardy trees. It was a matter of difficulty so to cut and maim them as to take the substance or vitality out of them. So long as the trunk or stem was allowed to remain in the soil, they were sure, in course of time, to grow and flourish anew; and Isaiah was taught by God Himself that His people would be equally tenacious of life. Period after period there would be a tenth—a remnant, however diminutive, as many as would, by the blessing of heaven, once more develop into a prosperous nation. Sooner or later the judgments of God would have the desired effect, and the tree that had been hurt and peeled would give indications that it had not been deprived of all its substance or vitality. C. Cron.

So holy seed shall be the substance of the human race. They are that part of it which remains living when the generations fall and decay like the leaves from an oak. For the growth and development of the tree the seasons have been made what they are. Indeed, the whole meaning of the season is this—it is God’s contrivance to get living, growing, fruitful trees. And the whole meaning of all the seasons of time and history is this—it is a plan of God to get a holy seed, a tree of life, a peculiar people. When the seasons are all past, when the generations have all lived and died, and the true substance of the human remains as the substance of the oak when it casts its leaves, then will there be on the banks of the river of the water of life, in the new heavens and the new earth, a tree of life whose leaf shall not wither and whose fruit shall be yielded every month. W. R. Brooks.

7:1 AND it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went 2 up to Jerusalem to war against it; but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind. 3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy 4 son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the high way of the fuller’s field; and say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thine heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the son 5 of Remaliah. Because Syria hath counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of 6 Remaliah, saying, Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein

7 for us, and set up a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel : thus saith the Lord God, 8 It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin : and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken in 9 pieces, that it be not a people : and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. 10, 11 And the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God ; ask 12 it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I 13 tempt the LORD. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David ; is it a small thing for you 14 to weary men, that ye will weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign ; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, 15 (God is with us.) Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and 16 choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the 17 land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. 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 Ephraim departed from Judah ; even the king of Assyria. 18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the 19 uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all pastures. 20 In that day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, which is in the parts beyond the River, even with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet : and it shall also consume the beard. 21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two 22 sheep ; and it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter : for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst of the land. 23 And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place, where there were a thousand vines 24 at a thousand silverlings, shall even be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with bow 25 shall one come thither ; because all the land shall be briers and thorns. And all the hills that were digged with the mattock, thou shalt not come thither for fear of briers and thorns, but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep.

HERE begins a series of connected prophecies (chaps. 7-12), belonging to the reign of Ahaz, and relating in general to the same great subjects, the deliverance of Judah from Syria and Israel, its subsequent subjection to Assyria and other foreign powers, the final destruction of its enemies, the advent of Messiah and the nature of His kingdom. This series admits of different divisions, but it is commonly agreed that one distinct portion is contained in the seventh chapter. The chapter begins with a brief historical statement of the invasion of Judah by Rezin and Pekah, and of the fear which it excited, to relieve which Isaiah is commissioned to meet Ahaz in a public place, and to assure him that there is nothing more to fear from the invading powers, that their evil design cannot be accomplished, that one of them is soon to perish, and that in the mean time both are to remain without enlargement (verses 1-9). Seeing the king to be incredulous, the prophet invites him to assure himself by choosing any sign or pledge of the event, which he refuses to do under the pretext of confidence in God, but is charged with unbelief by the prophet, who nevertheless renews the promise of delivdeliv-erance in a symbolical form, and in connection with a prophecy of the miraculous conception and nativity of Christ, both as a pledge of the event and as a measure of the time in which it is to take place (verses 10-16). To this assurance of immediate deliverance he adds a threatening of ulterior evils, to arise from the Assyrian protection which the king preferred to that of God—to wit, the loss of independence, the successive domination of foreign powers, the harassing and predatory occupation of the land by strangers, the removal of its people, the neglect of tillage, and the transformation of its choicest vineyards, fields and gardens into wastes or pastures (verses 17-25). A.

1. The prophet Isaiah had his commission renewed in the year that King Uzziah died (chap. 6 : 1). Jotham his son reigned, and reigned well, sixteen years ; all that time, no doubt, Isaiah prophesied as he was commanded, and yet we have not in this book any of his prophecies dated in the reign of Jotham ; but this which is put first was in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham. H.

Rezin, the king of Damascene Syria or Aram, appears to have formed an alliance with Pekah, the murderer and successor of Pekahiah, king of Israel (2 K. 15 : 27), during the reign of Jotham (verse 37), but to have deferred the actual invasion of Judah until that king’s death and the accession of his feeble son, in the first year of whose reign it probably took place, with most encouraging success, as the army of Ahaz was entirely destroyed, and two hundred thousand persons taken captive, who were afterward sent back at the instance of the prophet Oded (2 Chron. 28 : 5-15). But notwithstanding this success, they were unable to effect their main design, the conquest of Jerusalem, whether repelled by the natural strength and artificial defences of the place itself or interrupted in the siege by the actual or dreaded invasion of their own dominions by the king of Assyria (2 K. 16 : 7-9). It seems to be at a point of time between their first successes and their final retreat that the prophet’s narrative begins. A.

The history of Ahaz may be seen in 2 K. 16 and 2 Chron. 28. Suffice it to say of him here that the sacred record shows him to have been intensely wicked; more radically apostate from God than any Jewish king before him; more propense to idol-worship, and more reckless of God and of the dictates of common humanity. It seems that very early in his reign the Syrians made war upon him; defeated his army with immense slaughter, and took many captives; also that Pekah, king of Israel (here called Ephraim), prevailed against him; “slew one hundred and twenty thousand men in one day, all valiant men, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers,” and took two hundred thousand captives. All these, at the instance of the prophet Oded, were restored to their homes. It appears, however, both from 2 K. 16 : 5 and from the statements here that these hostile kingdoms, even combined, were not able to take Jerusalem. Still those allies were a formidable power, and their approach at this time gave the court of Ahaz and the inhabitants of Jerusalem occasion for serious fear. H. C.

2. Syria, the constant foe of the house of David, had regained its former influence. The professed aim of the renewed confederacy was not bloody war, but a friendly revolution to remove an unpopular king. Their real aim was to make Judah a vassal of Syria and Ephraim. There was thus great cause for dismay. The people feared the renewal of former bloodshed, and the house of David were aware of deep discontent among the people. Faith alone could have made them bold, and this faith was wholly wanting. Birks.

3-16. Accompanied by his elder son, Isaiah meets the idolatrous king, assures him of deliverance, and offers him a sign in proof thereof. But Ahaz had cast off his allegiance to Jehovah, and with a certain show of consistency will accept no sign from a Deity whom he no longer serves. But Judah is still Jehovah’s people, and He grants them the sign rejected by the royal house. The word “sign” is our word “miracle.” In John’s Gospel the word rendered “miracle” in our version is constantly in the Greek “sign;” and thus what Isaiah offered was a miracle—that is, a sign of God’s presence, not in the ordinary workings of nature, but in some special and supernatural way. Ahaz will have no miracle; Isaiah gives him the miracle of the virgin’s child, the Immanuel. A mere ordinary event is not in biblical language a sign. Yet this sign has an ordinary side to it. As far as Ahaz and unbelievers generally were concerned, there was nothing more than a plain promise, though couched in an obscure form, that within about two years all danger from the confederacy would have passed away. R. P. S.

3. The two sons of Isaiah had the same character of “signs from the Lord” (8 : 18). The name of the younger was given by express command (8 : 1-4), and announced the speedy advent of the Assyrian spoiler. Of Shearjashub no such details are given.

6. Taboal. The view of Calvin seems to agree better with the context, that he was the head of the disaffected party in Judah. By promoting a Jewish noble or popular favorite, the confederates would be most likely to secure their object of making Judah a vassal and dependent power. The presence of a stranger, a Syrian noble, would have been a constant motive for revolt, and sign of degradation. Birks.

8,9. Their plans shall not succeed, for Damascus shall continue to be the capital of Syria, and of nothing more; Rezin shall be the headman, the king, of Damascus and not of Jerusalem besides; and within sixty-five years shall Ephraim be so completely crushed as to be no people. And not only so, but up to that time (sixty-five years hence) Samaria shall be the capital of Ephraim only, not of Ephraim and of Judah both. Ye need therefore have no fear of the partition of Judah between these foreign powers, or of her being attached as a tributary to either of them. H. C.

9. If ye will not believe, surely ye will not be established. Their unbelief was the true source of their confusion and sorrow. Birks.—The requirement of faith runs through the entire Old Testament. The leading of Israel, from the time of its deliverance out of Egypt (Ex. 4:31; 14:31, cf. especially De. 1:32; 9:23, and many other passages), rests entirely on faith. But in proportion as its Divine election seemed to human apprehension thwarted, and the promise of redemption forfeited, by the apostasy of the nation and the judgments thereby incurred, the more emphatically is it asserted how all-important faith was, as the root of all righteousness, and the condition on which the blessing was to be obtained. “If ye do not believe, truly ye shall not remain”—i.e., be in a firm and stable condition—is the word of the prophet to Ahaz when he sought help from Assyria. What then is this faith? Negatively speaking, it is a ceasing from all natural confidence in one’s own strength and power, a renunciation of all trust in human support and assistance. Accordingly Jeremiah thus describes unbelief (17:5), “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm” (which was just what Ahaz had done). Positively, it is a fastening or leaning; for this is the proper meaning of the word, namely, a fastening of the heart upon the Divine word of promise, a leaning upon the power and faithfulness of God, by reason of which He can and will effect what He chooses in spite of all earthly obstacles. On its negative side, whereby faith renounces self-chosen human ways; it is a resting in, a quiet waiting for God. Oehler.

10-15. The previous verses are the historical preface to this wonderful prophecy. The sign offered was to be a pledge of God’s enduring favor to the house of David, now threatened at home and abroad, by the disaffected in Judah, and by the confederate kings. The title “thy God” reminds Ahaz of the sure covenant of David, on which he was bound to rest.

11. The answer of Ahaz alludes to De. 6:16. He wrests the command of God into an excuse for rejecting God’s own offer. He did not wish to be bound to God’s service by any fresh tie, and clung to his scheme of hiring the king of Assyria. Birks.

14. The Lord shall give you a sign, behold a virgin, etc.** The main object of this sign of unusual dignity was, in the hour of alarm and terror, to renew the confidence of the faithful in God’s double covenant to Abraham and to David, of One who should possess the gate of His enemies, and of that Son of David who should rise up to sit on His throne, of whose kingdom there should be no end. The purpose of the hostile league was wholly to displace the sacred line, and to set up the son of Tabeal (verse 6), a stranger or a renegade, on David’s throne. The promise, then, to the house of David of the greater Son of David, whose birth would be a miracle of Divine power, the Owner of the land (8:8-10), and the Redeemer of His people from their enemies, is confirmed with greater fulness and clearness than before. But a special warning, due to the present sin of Ahaz and his people, is here joined with the promise. Not only the present invasion, which would very soon be at an end, but heavier troubles and desolations from the Assyrian spoiler (verses 17-20), whom they were blindly inviting to relieve them from a momentary danger, were coming upon the whole land, on Judah as well as Ephraim; and it would thus be reduced to a waste and desolate condition, before this promised child should enter on His work of deliverance. Birks.

The sign suited the time of backsliding and apostasy. For it told the house of David that, wearying God as they were doing by their sins, He would vindicate His cause in a way they little expected or desired; that He would secure the establishment of His covenant with the house of David, by raising up a child in whom the Divine should actually commingle with the human; but that this child should be the offspring of some unknown virgin, not of Ahaz or of any ordinary occupant of the throne; and that, meanwhile, everything should go to desolation and ruin—first, indeed, in the allied kingdoms of Israel and Syria (verse 16), but afterward also in the kingdom of Judah (verses 17-25); so that the destined possessor of the throne, when he came, should find all in a prostrate condition, and grow up like one in an impoverished and stricken country, fed with the simple fare of a cottage shepherd (cf. verse 16 with 22). P. F.

The article, “the virgin,” is significant. It can refer to no wife of the prophet, since this was to be a royal child; nor of Ahaz, of whom no younger son came to the throne; nor of Hezekiah, still a mere child. The allusion is to the first promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. This promise had been limited, first to the race of Abraham, and next, to the seed of David; and “the virgin” must thus mean that damsel of the race of David, for whom the high honor was reserved, in God’s secret counsel, to give birth in due season to the long-promised king of Israel, the Saviour of the world. Birks.

Only one virgin and one child Immanuel are spoken of—viz., the Virgin Mary and the child

Jesus; they are shown to the prophet in vision with no reference to time, but are shown so vividly that he sees them, and thinks of them as present, and therefore speaks of them as related to present events, and so makes the youthful years and the food of the child indications of important future facts. H. C.—If a thing at all future may be declared as a sign, it makes no difference whether the thing be future by three years, or by three hundred, provided that one circumstance be observed, which is, that the man, or body of men, to whom the fact is declared to be a sign, shall exist and see the thing accomplished. This was manifestly the case here. For not only Ahaz, to whom the second prophecy was delivered, saw that fulfilled as to the two kings his enemies, but also the house of David, to whom the first prophecy was addressed, saw that fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Kennicott.—There is no ground, grammatical, historical, or logical, for doubt as to the main point, that the Church in all ages has been right in regarding this passage as a signal and explicit prediction of the miraculous conception and nativity of Jesus Christ. A.

The essential feature of the given sign is not the fact that a virgin conceives, but that the Messiah is Immanuel, that the unchangeable communion of God with His people is actually made apparent in the midst of impending judgments. The mysterious nature, however, of the expression can neither here nor in Micah (5:2) be mistaken. The exalted nature of the Messiah is more definitely brought forward in 9:6, 7: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government is upon His shoulders; and His name is called the Wonderful Counsellor, the mighty God” (for so must it be understood, cf. 10:21), “the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; for the increase of the government and for peace without end on David’s throne and in his kingdom, to establish and support it with judgment and justice, from henceforth and forever.” The Messiah is evidently regarded as a Divine Being, though here also the expressions are mysteriously indefinite. In the Messianic passage (11:1, sqq.), the Divine element in the Messiah appears only as the fulness of the Spirit of the Lord resting upon Him, and endowing Him for His righteous and happy rule. How close, side by side, to use Stier’s expression, the two lines of promise—the appearance of God and the appearance of the Messiah—run, and seem almost to touch without uniting, is shown also by the Messianic predictions of the subsequent prophets. We notice Jer. 23 in connection with 33:14-26. In the first passage, the prophet, who in chap. 22 had declared the race of the two kings Jehoia-chin and Jehoiakim to be excluded from the throne of David, proclaims that the Lord will, at the time when He gathers His flock from all countries whither He has driven them, raise up unto David a righteous Branch. The same expression reappears (33:15); nay, “Branch” becomes even a proper name of the Messiah (Zech. 3:8; 6:12). Oehler.

The promise of Immanuel has a primary and a secondary purpose. The first and chief was to strengthen the hope of the faithful in Judah in this hour of fear and danger, that they might stay their souls anew on the covenant to Abraham and to David, and also gain some further insight into the mysterious nature and dignity of the Messiah who was to come. He was to be “Immanuel,” God with us, the Son of the Virgin, pure and sinless from His birth, knowing to choose good and refuse evil. A foundation is thus laid for all Isaiah’s later messages, centring on the same glorious Child; the Rod from the Stem of Jesse, the Root of Jesse, the precious Corner-stone, laid by God Himself in Zion, the King to reign in righteousness, the Divine Shepherd of Israel, the Chosen and Beloved Servant of God, the Man of sorrows, the great Intercessor for transgressors, the Anointed Preacher of comfort to the mourners in Zion, the Salvation of His people, the King who speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. But a secondary object, connected with the time when this great promise is renewed, was to teach them that this Deliverer would not arise and redeem His people till sore calamities from the Assyrian spoilers had first lighted on the whole land of promise, and its fruitful Carmels, its vineyards and oliveyards, had been changed into open pasture-fields and comparative desolation. Birks.

We have what may justly be called two inspired commentaries on this prediction—one in the Old, and another in the New, Testament. The prophet Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, evidently referring to the words before us, says immediately after announcing the birth of the future Ruler of Israel at Bethlehem, “Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she who shall bear hath brought forth” (verse 3). The peculiar expression, “she who shall bear,” points to the already designated mother of the Divine King, but only in this prediction of Isaiah designated as the virgin; so that, in the language of Rosenmüller, “both predictions throw light on each other. Micah discloses the Divine origin of the Person predicted; Isaiah the wonderful manner of His birth." The other allusion in inspired Scripture is by Matthew, when, relating the miraculous circumstances of Christ’s birth, he adds, “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child,” etc. And the prophecy, as Bishop Lowth has well stated, “is introduced in so solemn a manner; the sign is so marked, as a sign selected and given by God Himself, after Ahaz had rejected the offer of any sign of his own choosing out of the whole compass of nature; the terms of the prophecy are so peculiar, and the name of the child so expressive, containing in them much more than the circumstances of the birth of a common child required, or even admitted, that we may easily suppose, that in minds prepared by the general expectation of a great deliverer to spring from the house of David, they raised hopes far beyond what the occasion suggested; especially when it was found that in the subsequent prophecy, delivered immediately afterward, this child, called Immanuel, is treated as the Lord and Prince of Judah (8: 8-10). Who could this be, other than the heir of the throne of David? under which character a Divine person had been promised.” P. F.

The Christ would be both God and man, Immanuel, not only the Son of Adam but the Son of God, at once David’s Son and David’s Lord, the Son of Mary and the Son of the Highest. Isaiah prepared the faithful for this mysterious parentage by his grand prophecy of the birth of the virgin’s son, Immanuel. The Messiah would not abhor the virgin’s womb, that He might become “God with us.” This was done when Messiah was born of Mary, and the Son of God became Jesus, the Son of man (Isa. 7: 14; Matt. 1: 22, 23). The Christ was then divulged, and the Messianic idea fully developed. All the scattered rays of prophecy were concentrated in Jesus as their focus. All the confluent streams of grace and truth met and merged in Him, the end of the law, the goal of the grand march of Messianic prophecy, the revelation of the mystery of the ages, the denouement of the Divine redemptive plan, “the brightness of God’s glory and the express impress of His substance” (Heb. 1: 1-3). We find, therefore, not only a gradual objective Messianic revelation, but a corresponding subjective Messianic consciousness, which grew like the rising sun unto the perfect day, and as the mountain stream into the rolling river. At the commencement of this development the promised seed was general, comprehending Christ; then the special seed of Abraham as a unity, his one seed by Sarah and not by Hagar, and his one son Isaac, and afterward the one royal tribe of Judah, the one family and one son of David, prefigured the coming Messianic personage. And now Christ, as the one grand seed of faithful Abraham, has become the typical head of the unity of all believers, the centre of the one collective seed, who are federally and morally all one in Him (Gal. 3: 28). There was a progressive development from seed in general to a particular seed or people; next to a special seed or person; and thence to a living personage, who was to be prophet, priest and king of Israel and of God. The Messianic idea is thus realized in the threefold appellation, Jesus Christ the Lord; the first being His human name among men, the second His historical and official designation, and the last His personal Divine title as Son of God, King of kings and King of Zion (Luke. 2: 11). Jas. Scott.

Jesus Christ is God. His divinity is not an acquired decoration of His human soul in His maturer years. It is not merely the highest degree of moral likeness to the Universal Father. It is not the lustre of a soul perpetually communing with God. Our Lord’s divinity is not the mere crown and beauty of His manhood; it is not the point which was reached when as man He had in sanctity and sublime perfection reached what other men account the superhuman. Nor is it either the reflected admiration of a loving and grateful disciple, or the idealizing effort of an infant Church, warm in its reverential love, and too intent on worship to be capable of reserve or of criticism. The Godhead of Jesus is not a metaphor, it is a great and solemn fact, the confession of which is for us Christians no lifeless formula or dead dogma. It is not an unwelcome admission, grudgingly yielded by us in obedience to the pressure of orthodox formularies, or to the sterner necessities of honest criticism. It is a living, an intense conviction, resting at once upon authority and upon conscience. It is a conviction to part with which is to part with all that can really brighten the dark prison-house of the human spirit. Deny the Godhead of Jesus, and you forfeit the essence of Christianity. Liddon.

That very truth which the Jews of our Lord’s time could not bear even to be mentioned in their presence—the truth of His proper Deity—was the indispensable preliminary to the realization of all that was predicted. Hence it is that the four evangelists, each in his own peculiar way, but with a common insight into the import of Old Testament prophecy and the real necessities of the case, all begin with laying this foundation. John opens his narrative with a formal and lengthened statement of Christ’s relation to the Godhead, and broadly asserts that in Him the Divine Word was made flesh. Luke also relates at length the circumstances of the miraculous conception, and with the view evidently of conveying the impression that this mode of being born into the world stood in essential connection with Christ’s being, in the strictest sense, “the Son of the Highest.” Even Mark, while observing the greatest possible brevity, does not omit the essential point, and begins his narrative with the most startling announcement that ever headed an historical composition, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And the first evangelist, who wrote more immediately for his Jewish brethren, and continually selects the points that were best fitted to exhibit Jesus as the Messiah of the Jewish Scriptures, characteristically enters on his narrative by describing the circumstances of Christ’s miraculous birth as the necessary fulfilment of one of the most marvellous prophecies of the incarnation: “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us.” P. F.

Majesty took upon itself humility; strength, weakness; eternity, mortality, without impairing the properties of each nature and substance that unite in one person. In order to pay the debt due by man, the inviolable nature (of God) united itself with our frail nature in order that, according to the requirements of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, might be mortal according to one side of His being, and immortal according to the other. The true God was, accordingly, born in the full and perfect nature of a real man, complete in the attributes of both His own nature and of ours. For He that is truly God is also truly man; nor is this union merely apparent, the lowliness of humanity and the highness of Deity communicating themselves to each other. For as God is not changed by compassion, so the humanity is not crushed by the dignity conferred upon it. For each nature does, in connection with the other, what is peculiar to itself—i.e., the Word does what is the Word’s, while the flesh carries out what belongs to the flesh. Letter of Leo the Great to Flavian.

The Lord of heaven and earth blended our nature with His own; He took the manhood into God. He bound us up with Himself as one indivisible being; He shared not only our state, but our nature and essence; He took from us a human nature that He might give us a divine. And this mystery of the God and man is a mystery for everlasting. As there ever has been, and ever will be, the eternal Son of God, so will there ever remain the eternal Son of man. This blessed union is incapable of dissolution; our immortality is suspended on its continuance; we could not have life eternal unless God were to be man eternal. The firstfruits will remain with the rest of the harvest in glory. Yes; forevermore shall the ransomed of Zion behold their own bright model in heaven, and grow more divine as they behold. He will still, as man and God, be the link that connects them with the Father; this poor humanity for which He suffered so bitterly He loves too deeply to part with it. It is said that mothers love with most tenderness the child for whom they have suffered most; the agonies of the eternal endured in our behalf have attached Him forever to our world and our nature. That nature He retains forever. W. A. B.

The taking on Himself of our flesh by the Eternal Word was no makeshift to meet a mighty, yet still a particular, emergent need; a need which, conceding the liberty of man’s will, and that it was possible for him to have continued in his first state of obedience, might never have occurred. It was not a mere result and reparation of the fall—such an act as, except for that, would never have been; but lay bedded at a far deeper depth in the counsels of God for the glory of His Son, and the exaltation of that race formed in His image and His likeness. For, against those who regard the incarnation as an arbitrary, or as merely an historic event, and not an ideal one as well, we may well urge this weighty consideration, that the Son of God did not, in and after His ascension, strip off this human nature again; He did not regard His humanity as a robe, to be worn for a while and then laid aside; the convenient form of His manifestation, so long as He was conversing with men on earth, but the fitness of which had with that manifestation passed away. So far from this, we know, on the contrary, that He assumed our nature forever, married it to Himself, glorified it with His own glory, carried it as the form of His eternal subsistence into the world of angels, before the presence of His Father. Had there been anything accidental here, had the assumption of our nature been an afterthought (I speak as a man), this marriage of the Son of God with that nature could scarcely be conceived. He could hardly have so taken it, unless it had possessed an ideal as well as an historic fitness; unless pre-established harmonies had existed, such harmonies as only a Divine intention could have brought about between the one and the other. Trench.

Our human nature became the tabernacle of God, that He might dwell with men, and make them His people, and be their God. It was an incarnation in which the heart of God reached the most distant part of His spiritual creation—a descent in which infinite greatness takes the deepest form of condescension, and infinite goodness the tenderest form of compassion. When a man’s spirit has been opened to it, it reveals to him a universe of love, at the summit and base of which are Divine majesty and human misery, and the incarnate Son of God is seen touching both and bringing them together. Ker.

The doctrine of incarnation is the glory of the spiritual history of mankind. It is the central fact in the scheme of moral providence, its unity, harmony and fountain of power. It is the realization of the highest purposes of God, the discovery of the depth of His wisdom, love and might. “Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in flesh.” If Jesus be the incarnation of divinity, it is no longer hard to believe that both His entrance into the world and His departure from it were supernatural. So far from being anomalous, this is altogether necessary and natural. Anything else would not have been in keeping with the history. His virgin-mother is a beautiful and simple reality. It would have been incongruous, even offensive, had He not been thus physically separated from all of human kind. His resurrection also, and His ascension to heaven, are transparencies as pure as His miraculous birth. It was most meet that, having lain in the grave and “tasted death for every man,” He should rise and pass into the skies. J. Young.

The ascended Christ upon the throne, and the historical Christ upon the earth, teach us what man may be, the one in regard of dignity, the other in regard of goodness. Here is a fact. Such a life was verily once lived on earth; a life of true manhood, whatever more it was. In it we may see two things: first, we may see from His perfect purity what it is possible for man to become; and, second, we may see from His experience who said, “The Father hath not left Me alone, because I do always the things which please Him,” how close a fellowship is possible between the human spirit that lives for and by obedience, and the Father of us all. The man Christ Jesus was visited by God, yea, God dwelt with Him ever; whatever more He was—and He was infinitely more—He was also our example of communion, as He was our example of righteousness. A. M.

The incarnation teaches us, as nothing else conceivably can, the essential dignity of our human nature. For the chief distinction of this human nature and the supreme evidence of its soaring dignity is that—it is capable of the Divine. God can come into it, take it up into His own nature, dwell in it. What promise and potency must there not be in a nature of which this is true! What ranges of culture, what illimitable reaches of development must there not open before a being possessed of such nature as that God deigns to descend into it! And right here is the immense and unfailing spring of courage for all beneficent and uplifting endeavor. Sunk as low as you may find it, human nature is yet a nature capable of the Divine. The incarnation teaches us the truth of a new headship for our fallen race, by which the fallen may be lifted even unto the eternal glory. Adam is the head of the race by generation, through whom the race has fallen into fearful moral lapse. The incarnate Christ is the head of the race by regeneration, by whom the race may be lifted into the deliverance and dignity of the sons of God, into coheirship with Jesus Christ in His glory. W. Hoyt.

18. The evil times threatened in verse 17 are here more explicitly described as arising from the presence and oppression of foreigners, especially Assyrians and Egyptians, whose number and vexatious impositions are expressed by comparing them to swarms of noxious and annoying insects, pouring into the country by Divine command. A.

20. “A razor, hired from beyond the river.” Ahaz, in spite of God’s warning, was bent on hiring the king of Assyria to crush his present rivals, Rezin and Pekah (2 K. 16:8-10). Proud of this stroke of policy, he despised the warnings and the promises sent to him by the prophet. It succeeded for the moment, as faithless expediency often seems to do, but it would be bitterness in the end. His sin would lead to his own punishment, and that of his people. God Himself would hire this king of Assyria, by the hope of ample spoil, to waste Judah as well as Ephraim. Not only the hair of the head, the luxury and wealth of the king and his nobles, but even the hair of the feet,

the scanty necessaries of the poorest classes, would be scraped and shorn away. It would consume “even the beard,” the symbol in the East of all that was sacred and venerable. The treasures of God’s own Temple, the honor and dignity of the priesthood, would also be swept away by this fierce spoiler. Birks.