Isaiah 7

1. Rezin . . . and Pekah. See 2 Kings xvi. 5, 6; 2 Chron. xxviii. 5-8, and notes. The prophet’s message seems to have been delivered at some time between the first successes of the allied enemies and their final retreat.

2. Syria is confederate with Ephraim. Lit., “Syria resteth on Ephraim.” The name of the leading tribe of Israel signifies the whole kingdom. Syria had made it the “base of operations” against Judah.

3. Shear-Jashub. This name means “A remnant shall return”; and is afterwards used (x. 21), not as a name, but as a promise which the child’s presence was designed to convey.

the upper pool. This pool is a large tank or reservoir at the lower end of the Tyropœon valley. It is full in the rainy season; and its waters are then conducted by a “conduit,” or aqueduct, to the pool of Hezekiah, within the walls. See A Century of Excavation in Palestine, by Professor R. A. S. Macalister (R.T.S., 1925), p. 184. The “highway,” or rather “causeway,” probably ran along the stone wall which formed the lower end of the pool, and beside it the fullers—cleaners of woollen cloth—plied their trade: see xxxvi. 2, 11, 12.

4 the two tails of these smoking firebrands. More exactly, “these two tails (or stumps) of smoking firebrands.” Once mischievous, but now powerless.

6 the son of Tabeal. Nothing more is known of this person, who was probably a Syrian, as the name is Aramaic. Comp. Ezra iv. 7.

8 within three score and five years. The period thus defined includes the three successive strokes by which the power of the kingdom of Israel was annihilated; namely, the two invasions of Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser (2 Kings xv. 29; xvii. 6), and the introduction of foreign colonists by Esarhaddon (2 Kings xvii. 24). See, on these kings, Budge: Babylonians Life and History (R.T.S., 1925).

9. If ye will not believe. That is, Ahaz and his attendants, who probably showed signs of distrust, which led to this additional message, offering and giving a sign.

11 a sign. A “sign” is a sensible pledge, not necessarily miraculous, of the truth of something else. Here it is a token of the truth of what the prophet had promised in God’s name.

12 neither will I tempt the Lord. When Ahaz was expressly commanded to ask for a sign, this was mere hypocrisy.

13. O house of David. Other princes of the royal family may have been in attendance upon the king. Will ye weary my God also? Will ye try His patience?

14 a (the) virgin shall conceive, and bear a son. Like so many prophecies of the O.T., this has clearly a double reference. The language of vers. 15, 16 points to an early deliverance, within the lifetime of the child. The second and complete fulfilment was in the birth of the Messiah (see Matt. i. 22, 23). As to the kingdom referred to (chap. vii. 18; viii. 8, etc.), Delitzsch has well said: “If Isaiah here, in chaps. vii.-xii., looks upon Assyria absolutely as the universal empire, this is so far true, seeing that the four empires from the Babylonian to the Roman are really only the unfolding of the beginning which had its place in Assyria. And if, here in chap. vii., he thinks of the son of the virgin as growing up under the Assyrian oppressions, this is also so far true, since Jesus was actually born in a time in which the Holy Land . . . found itself under the supremacy of the universal empire, and in a condition which went back to the unbelief of Ahaz as its ultimate cause.”

15 butter and honey. (The word translated “butter” means thickened milk, curds or cheese.) These products are those of the desert, or of a country which has been depopulated and turned into pasture. Comp. ver. 21.

16. The land that thou abhorrest, etc. Or, “The land whose two kings thou fearest shall be forsaken,” i.e., by its inhabitants; given up to desolation.

17. Days that have not come. Ever since the days of Ahaz, with the exception of very brief periods, the Jews have been subject to foreign domination.

18 shall hiss. See note on chap. v. 26.

the fly . . . the bee. These figures well represent the numbers and destructiveness of their enemies. The fly is peculiarly appropriate to Egypt, where the moist heat produces it in abundance.

20 a razor that is hired. Ahaz had hired the help of the king of Assyria with the treasures of God’s house: and God would hire or allure him by the plunder and conquest of the land. The head and feet, as the two extremities, represent the whole body, and the beard what was most valued and honoured.

21 a man shall nourish, etc. The people being too few and poor to till the land, should resume pastoral life, and that upon the scantiest scale, the finest and strongest cattle having passed into the enemy’s hands. But with the reduced population, even this would supply milk enough and to spare.

22. Abundance, etc. The pasture being rich because of the few beasts to eat it down.

23 silverlings. Lit., “pieces (probably shekels) of silver.” A shekel per vine was the rent of a valuable vineyard.

24. With arrows and with bows. Both for their own protection and for the chase, wild animals having now made their homes in the district.

25. There shall not come thither, etc. Rather, “Thou shalt not come thither for fear,” etc. This verse completes the description of the general desolation; thorns and briars being represented as growing on the terraced hills; and districts once carefully tilled being converted into pastures.