1. In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah,
Rezin the king of Syria and
Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel
came up to Jerusalem to war against her,
but could not engage war upon her.
2. And it was related to
the house of David, saying,
"Syria has taken control over Ephraim1,"
and his heart2 and the heart of his people trembled
like the trembling of trees of the forest before the wind.
3.
Then Yahweh said to Isaiah,
"Go out now to call on Ahaz,
you and Shear-jashub your son,
at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer's Field.
4. And you shall say to him,
'Take care and keep calm,
don’t be afraid, and do not let your heart faint
because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands,
at the fierce anger of Rezin (that is, Syria) and the son of Remaliah -
5. because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah,
has plotted evil against you, saying,
6. "Let us go up into Judah
and terrify her,
and let us conquer her for ourselves,
and cause a descendant of Tabeel to reign amongst her as king!"
7. Thus says the Lord Jehovah:
"It shall not stand,
and it shall not be,
8. for the head of Syria is Damascus,
and the head of Damascus is Rezin,
and within sixty-five years Ephraim
will break from being a people.
9. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,
and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.
If y’all won’t confirm it,
then y’all won’t be confirmed.”'"
10. Then again Jehovah spoke to Ahaz saying,
11. "Ask for yourself a sign from Yahweh your God;
make it deep as Sheol or make it high as high can be."
12. But Ahaz said,
"I will not ask,
and I will not test Yahweh."
13. So he said,
"Hear then, O house of David!
Is it a trifle from y’all to weary men,
that you weary my God also?
14. Therefore Yahweh3 Himself will give a sign to y’all:
the virgin is pregnant and about to give birth to son,
and she will call His name ‘Immanuel.’
15. Butter and honey is what he will eat
until He knows to refuse with the evil
and to choose with the good.
16. For before the boy knows to refuse with the evil and to choose with the good,
the land which you are dreading will be deprived of the presence of her two kings.
17. Yet4 Yahweh will bring upon you and upon your people and upon the house of your father days such as have not come since the day of the turning away of Ephraim from Judah – the king of Assyria!"
18. And it will be in that day that
Yahweh will whistle for the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt,
and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria,
19. and they will come and settle – all of them
in the steep ravines, and
in the clefts of the landmark-rocks, and
in all the thornbushes, and
in all the pastures.
20. In that day
my Master will shave with a hired razor from beyond the River – with the king of Assyria –
your head as well as the hair of your feet,
and also it will sweep away your beard.
21. And it will be in that day
a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep,
22. then it will be that, after an increase in the production of milk, he will eat butter,
since butter and honey will be what everyone left in the inner part of the land will eat.
23. And it will be in that day
that where there used to be a thousand vines worth a thousand in silver,
every place will become briers and thorns.
24. With bow{s}5 and with arrows one will go there,
because all the land will be briers and thorns.
25. And all the mountains that were hoed with a hoe,
you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns,
rather, it will be for sending out an ox and for a lamb to trample.
INTRO
Once upon a time there was a hiker hiking in the Canadian Rockies. Suddenly a grizzly bear came out of the woods nearby, looked straight at him, and snarled. Now, this hiker had in his possession a big game rifle – a .416 Rigby, but he decided instead to pick up a rotten log and wave it at the bear to chase it away. Needless to say, that hiker didn’t survive his encounter with that grizzly.
You may say he was silly not to use his high-powered rifle, but we do the exact same thing all the time, except not with grizzly bears but with our life problems.
This passage before us is a warning not to try to solve our problems merely with the “rotten logs” of our own smarts and resources and friends, we need the “.416 Rigby” of faith that God offers us if we want to be overcomers!
SETTING:
Isaiah chapter 6 is dated “the year that King Uzziah died,” so Jotham, his son, was king of Judah, and the previous prophecies of chapters 1-5 may have been delivered during Uzziah and Jotham’s co-regency, as Uzziah gradually handed over rulership to his son.
Now, in Isaiah chapter 7, Jotham’s son, Ahaz, is king of Judah, and Pekah, son of Remaliah is king of the northern kingdom of Israel (which is called “Ephraim” in this chapter).
From the history books of 2 Kings (chapter 16) and 2 Chronicles (chapter 28), we can read what is going on politically at this time of Isaiah’s prophecy. The problem that Ahaz, king of Judah, has is that the army of Aram (also known as Syria) has allied with the northern kingdom of Israel in a plan to conquer Judah and put a puppet king6 on the throne of Judah that they can control.
Ahaz has reason to be afraid. As later events proved, this army was powerful enough to kill 120,000 Jews and take another 200,000 captive from Judah and Jerusalem, and even capture Ahaz himself.
But that hasn’t happened yet. In Isaiah 7, Ahaz is faced with the faith-challenging decision of how to respond to this national threat. Would he trust God to save him, or would he trust in his own resources?
As we will see, Ahaz decides to refuse to exercise faith in God and instead to rely upon an alliance with Assyria, a nation north of Syria, hoping that Assyria will raid Damascus and Samaria so that the Aramean and Ephraimite armies will pull back to defend themselves and leave Judah alone.
That is Ahaz’s plan, and in v. 3, Ahaz is checking out the water supply for his capitol city of Jerusalem to see if he can withstand a siege for long enough until he gets the result he wants from Assyria7.
But God sends a message to Ahaz by the prophet Isaiah to call Ahaz in a different direction, namely to trust in God rather than in man for his deliverance. God uses three means in this chapter to call Ahaz in this direction of faith: through a person, through commands, and through signs.
The meaning of the name Shuar-yashuv is both a promise and a threat:
The threat implied is that, in order for a remnant to “return,” the main population is going to have to be sent away first. There is a judgment coming upon God’s people which will cause God’s people to be exiled from the Promised Land.
But the promise embedded in that boy’s name is that God will preserve a “remnant” which will “return” to live in the Promised Land. The Jews will not be obliterated, because God promised Abraham and David that He would bring forth the Messiah from their descendants.
Now, if you look down at v.16, there is another message which I believe God has for King Ahaz related to the boy.
First let me explain that it was Isaiah’s standard mode of prophecy to speak of multiple things at once,
one thing in his immediate historical context
and another thing hundreds of years in the future when Messiah would come on the scene,
and sometimes Isaiah even included a third level of eschatalogical things related to Jesus’ second coming.
I believe that the boy in v.16, at the immediate level of meaning, is Isaiah’s son Shuar-yashuv.
The message to Ahaz, in effect is, “Look at this little boy! Think about his future as you make your big political decisions.
In just a few years – perhaps about a decade, this boy will be an adult, making his own decisions, and the political situation he lives in will be very different from what it is today.
These powerful kings and armies that you are so afraid of, they come and go, “Before this child knows how to refuse evil and choose good, the countries you are so terrified of will no longer be a threat to Judah.”
There is a sovereign God who is controlling the destinies of these nations, and He is the one you should be banking on, not these changing nations of men.
Indeed, we can see from history that within 2 to 20 years of the date of this prophecy (depending on whose dates you follow), the army of Assyria indeed toppled the Syrian capitol of Damascus and brought an end to the monarchy of the northern kingdom of Israel.
But, as with the other parts of this prophecy, there is a threat. Shear Yashuv “will be eating yogurt/curds and honey,” says v.15.
Now, at first blush that sounds delicious,
but if you think about it, if that’s all they have to eat - and the emphatic position of the words “curds and honey” may be may be indicating this, then this is describing the diet of someone who no longer practices agriculture. This is the diet of a nomad who only has a little bit of cattle to graze wherever he can find space to live.
Honey was not thought of then as a domesticated product; it was something you found in the wild. Honey was hunter-gatherer food.
This tips us off that the future of Judea is going to be rough in the years to come. The reason is that Ahaz and the rest of God’s people continued to rebel against God and worship idols, so God withdrew His blessing from them.
Now, there is another boy named “Immanuel” that this passage points to - another 700 years down the timeline, but I think this is the short-term message God was sending through the presence of Isaiah’s son Shuar-yashuv.
In other words, “Don’t let the current events fluster you such that you take your eyes off of the sovereign LORD!”
This is what God calls us to do as well, when we hear that bad things are happening. Believers can maintain an attitude of “outward restraint and inner calm” (Calvin).
How do you do that? You trust God. That’s how to quiet fears. Faith is the opposite of fear.
Faith “keeps taking care” of the things God has called you to take care8 of. Don’t run off and do something else simply because something looks threatening.
This was what God said over and over again to His people in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua:
Exodus 23:13 "Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.” (NIV)
Exodus 34:12 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you.” (NIV)
Deut. 4:23 “Be careful not to forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the LORD your God has forbidden.” (NIV)
Deut. 6:12 “Take care lest you forget Yahweh, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (NAW)
Deut. 8:11 “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.” (NIV)
Joshua 23:11 “Therefore take careful heed to yourselves, that you love the LORD your God.” (NKJV)
Faith in God also leads us to “be quiet/calm”
Isaiah 30:15 “For thus says my Master, Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and quiet/rest you will be saved; in quietness and in trust will be your strength.’” (NAW)
Psalm 46:10-11 “Be still9 and know that it is I who am God. I will be exalted throughout the nations; I will be exalted throughout the earth! Yahweh of hosts is with us; a high-fortress for us is the God of Jacob.” (NAW)
Isa. 26:3 “A steadfast10 mind you will guard in perfect peace, for it trusts in You.” (NAW)
Will you fight the urge to panic and forget God when you hear scary news?
Maybe it will be a cancer diagnosis.
Maybe it will be the loss of health and ability as you age
Maybe it will be a call-up to deploy in a war
Maybe it will be financial disaster
“Be careful [to remember and love God], be quiet [and rely on Jesus to deliver you through this], do not fear, do not let your heart faint!”
In v. 7, God says that the evil plans of Syria and Israel will not stand. They are fire-pokers with nothing but smoke to them – they have no fire to burn Ahaz. They are on their way out.
Verses 8-9 go on to say that Rezin will remain king over Syria – in other words, he is not going to become king over Judah, he will only be king over Damascus.
Likewise Pekah, son of Remaliah will remain king over nothing but Ephraim – and will therefore not become king over Judah either. (Note how God shows his disdain for Pekah by not even mentioning his name.)
And history bears that out. If you follow James Ussher’s dates, this prophecy was delivered in 742 BC11. And if you count backwards in BC time, Tiglath Pileazar, the king of Assyria, conquered Damascus and raided Ephraim in 740 BC – two years later! So these smoking firebrands were indeed about to go out.
But Ahaz had no way to know that was going to happen. Isaiah was calling him to step out in faith, trusting God to keep him safe.
Ahaz didn’t know that Assyria would have conquered those nations anyway without him making an alliance with Assyria.
If Ahaz had kept trusting God, Assyria would have taken care of these threats without Ahaz having to even make a foreign alliance.
God can protect His people if they will just trust Him!
And the prophecy that in 65 years Ephraim would no longer be a people came true very specifically, but also gradually, due to a continuing series of attacks on Ephraim by the kings of Assyria:
Tiglath-Pilezar’s successor Shalmanezer came down in the year 728 and forced the king of the northern country of Israel to pay tribute,
then the next Assyrian king, Sennacharib, came down in another military campaign, in which he wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel
Then this prophecy was fulfilled explicitly 65 years later in 677BC, when the Assyrians settled a bunch of other nationalities in the area of Samaria, erasing the Jewish demographic, so that Samaria was no longer a Jewish land.
Even into the time of the New Testament, this area was called “Galilee of the Gentiles” and “the land of the Samaritans” (Matt. 4:15, 10:5).
Then Isaiah delivers the challenge of faith at the end of verse 9: “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.” (ESV)
Both of the Hebrew verbs at the end of v.9 come from the same root אמנ meaning to “be firm/confident/trustworthy.”
The first is spelled with a negative and a causative: “If you do not cause12 to stand firm in trust,” and the second is in a passive stem, “then you will not be firm and trustworthy.”
He delivers this challenge not only to Ahaz but also to everyone standing there, for he uses the second person plural, “If y’all don’t believe, then y’all will not be established.” This broadens the application to us as well!
Verses 8 and 9 parallel each other. This prophecy of Ephraim no longer being a people within 65 years is a warning to Ahaz: Ephraim will be wiped out as a nation within 65 years, and if you do not place your faith in God, you too will be wiped out.
God’s next word to Ahaz in v.11 springboards off of this statement: “Now, if faith takes work to stand firm in, then how about you ask for a sign that will strengthen your faith in me,” says God.
God encouraged Ahaz by saying he could ask for anything he wanted – as high as the heights of heaven or as deep as the depths of Sheol.
The Hebrew word “Sheol” (the place of the dead) sounds a lot like the Hebrew word for “ask,” so some English translations read “ask” instead of “Sheol” but that doesn’t essentially change God’s wide-open invitation to ask for a sign.
This was actually a command to the king to bolster his faith. As Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 1:22, “Jews seek for signs…” It was part of the Jewish culture to ask a sign from God to strengthen one’s faith.
That is what Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah did later on, asking for the shadow on the sundial to go back a certain number of degrees as a sign that God would indeed give him the 15 more years of life that were promised.
Should we ask God for signs now? If we look at the rest of 1 Corinthians 1:22ff, it says, “Jews require signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but, as for us, we are preaching Christ crucified... Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (NAW) so the focus for us should not be on signs but rather on Christ Himself, although God undeniably gives us special answers to prayer here and there that strengthen our faith, and if the Holy Spirit leads you to ask God for something in particular, ask for it!
But Ahaz refused to take any step that might increase his faith in God because he did not want to trust in God in the first place.
He hid his refusal to obey God’s command behind a pious-sounding pretense, but Isaiah cuts through the façade in v.13, “Is it too small a thing to weary men that you weary my lord also?”
How foolish! King Ahaz would rather trust a half-baked plan to form an alliance with Assyria than trust in the all-powerful, living God to deliver him! And that when God was offering him any help to his weak faith that could be asked!
We would never be so foolish as Ahaz… would we?
Do we ever balk at trusting God and stepping out in faith?
Do we ever hide our fear behind the guise of human wisdom and common sense?
Abraham did, when he decided God wasn’t trustworthy to make good on his promise to provide him with many descendants through Sarah, and he took matters into his own hands by depending on his human resources and trying to have children through Sarah’s maidservant. It was the sensible thing to do, but now we have the Arab-Israeli wars as a result of Abraham not trusting God.
The Jews had the “common sense” not to enter Canaan when the 10 spies told them that the land could not be conquered… and because they would not obey God and step out in faith, they did not get to enter into the Promised Land, but had to wander in the desert 40 years.
We do the same thing. We look at our finances and sensibly conclude that we aren’t making enough money to be able to pay our bills and give God a tithe, so we “rob God,” and then He makes our finances difficult as a result, like He did to the Jews in Malachi 3:8-10.
We worry that things which only God can control will destroy our assets, so we hire men to insure those assets for us. Then God has to do even more catastrophic things to get our attention because we have insurance for the simple things that He used to use to get His people’s attention.
We look at our calendars and can’t find time to go to church or Bible study, so God says, “You think you’re too overwhelmed now to give me your time? Do you realize how much more overwhelmed I can make you feel in order to get you to turn back to me?”
I’m sure you can think of other ways in which you are paralyzed by fear from stepping out and doing something that God calls you to do.
“If you do not stand by faith, you will not stand at all.” This is also why we need to ask for all the help we can get when it comes to trusting God. We must look for ways to strengthen our faith and the faith of others. We do this by:
Reading the Bible,
Enjoying Christian fellowship,
Partaking of the sacraments, and
Praying; these things all serve to strengthen our faith.
Pursue and practice these things with other believers so that your faith will be strengthened, so that you may stand firm in faith and not waver.
In Hebrews 10:38-39, it says, “…my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition; but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul.”
Finally in v.14, at the chiastic center of the prophecy, God, in His mercy, gave a sign, even though Ahaz did not ask for it: “A virgin will conceive and bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel...”
Now, if you’re reading a Revised Standard Version, NET Bible, American Jewish Version, or New World Translation, it will say “a young woman” rather than “a virgin.”
Admittedly, the Hebrew word almah can mean “a young woman,” but it is the only Hebrew word which could unequivocally mean an “unmarried woman.”
However, a virgin13 birth would mean a miracle, and that is one thing that the Neo-orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Jehovah’s Witnesses want to avoid admitting in their Bibles!
This has been a long-term point of controversy. In the 1500’s, Martin Luther challenged his Jewish contemporaries saying, “I will give 100 Gulden to anyone who can show that almah ever referred to a married woman in the Bible!” He didn’t have 100 Gulden to give away, but he never had to pony up that 100 Gulden because nobody could ever show that almah ever refers to a married woman in the Bible.14
But this is a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah. We know that because the Gospel of Matthew says so explicitly: “...Mary… was found with a pregnancy which she was having from the Holy Spirit… that what was said by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, when he said, ‘Behold the virgin will have a pregnancy and will deliver a son, and they will call Him by the name Emmanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us.’” (Matt. 1:18-22, NAW)
This name “Immanuel” is only ever used of Jesus, because no one else can legitimately claim to be “God with us”! But this sign is both a promise and a threat:
The good news in this sign is that God would not forsake His people.
He would deliver them from the threat of Syria and Ephraim and would choose to be with them in a very personal way through the virgin’s son.
vs.15-16 mention Him refusing evil and choosing good. This certainly characterized Jesus’ life. He never committed sin. He refused to do evil; He only did good – only the will of His Father. And because he never sinned, he was able to offer the perfect sacrifice to God to reconcile sinful humans to fellowship with the Holy God.
But there’s also a negative side to this prophetic sign:
v.17 describes a terrible invasion from the king of Assyria. That probably refers to the Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem in the year 701 BC, some 33 years after the prophecy of Isaiah 7.
vs. 18-19 describe the armies of Egypt and of Assyria covering the land of Israel like a horde of insects. Later in Isaiah’s historical writings, he describes this very thing happening as the Assyrian army methodically conquered every settlement in Israel on its march toward Jerusalem.
And v.20 says God would “shave His people with a hired razor.” 2 Kings and Chronicles tell the story behind that: King Ahaz sent a bunch of money to the king of Assyria, effectively “hiring” him to attack Syria and Samaria, but that same king of Assyria – the “hired razor” – came down and “shaved” Judah too! Later, Esar-haddon, king of Assyria came and took Ahaz’s grandson King Manassah captive.
If we place our trust in this world, the very things that we place our trust in, in order to get deliverance and make our lives successful, can be the very things that come back and destroy our lives. That’s what happened to Ahaz.
Think about the verb in v.21: “they will keep alive a cow.” Now, if you were a rancher, you might say that you “raised” cows, but you wouldn’t say, “I barely keep alive a cow and two sheep,” unless you were really bad off.
As I mentioned before about the diet of yogurt and honey, just as the years ahead in Israel are going to be difficult, so too, Jesus the Messiah would grow up in an occupied country under economic distress.
And v.25 tells us they would be pasturing their cattle in briar patches, not lush fields of grass. The remnant is not going to have an easy time when they return and the Messiah is born.
The reason for these divine threats was that Ahaz and his people were refusing to trust God: They kept worshipping idols and depending on human wisdom and living self-centered lives.
These chastisements were not because God is mean, they were because sinners were stubborn! In Jesus’ day, the God-with-us born of a virgin said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34, NKJV)
God desires for us to respond to His personal presence with faith and love for Him.
What is it that Jesus will be looking for when He returns and brings justice to the earth?
He tells us in Luke 18:8 “...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (NKJV)
So He says to the church in Revelation 2:10 “Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer... Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (NKJV)
And so it is at the end of time when He is revealed as “Lord of lords and King of Kings,” Who will be “with Him”? It will be those who “are called, chosen, and faithful” - trusting Him. (Rev. 17:14)15
So, whatever challenges God has placed in your life right now, go to Him in faith, trusting Him to deliver you.
“Fear not, be careful, quiet yourself...
ask for a sign” to assure your faith, do what it takes to stir up that faith and keep it burning;
cause faith to increase by all the means God gives us – using the means of grace – everything that encourages our faith,
because God wants us to step forward in faith,trusting in Him and Him alone, and if we do, He will be “God with us,” our “Immanuel.”
1The Targums explain “Ephraim” as “the king of Israel.”
2The oldest-known manuscript, 1QIsaiah-a, dated c. 125 BC, omits Ahaz’s heart trembling, but it is in the Syriac Peshitta (200s AD), the Greek Septuagint (300’s AD), the Latin Vulgate (400 AD), the Masoretic Hebrew (900’s AD), and the Targums (printed in the 1800’s AD, containing oral traditions going back to the 400s BC).
3The Hebrew word in the Masoretic Hebrew is “adonai (“my lord master”), but in the much-older 1QIsaiah-a, the only Dead Sea Scroll where this word is legible, the spelling is “Yahweh/LORD,” and the Targums, LXX, and Vulgate support the reading of the DSS over the reading of the MT. (Syriac omits the word altogether.)
4The older DSS (1QIsaiah-a) adds “and” before this word; the ancient Septuagint Greek adds “but” before this word, and the Syriac and Targums follow the Masoretic Text, not starting with a conjunction.
5The older DSS (1QIsaiah-a) spells “bow” plural [קשתות], and the ancient Syriac [קשׁתתא] and Vulgate [arcu] seem to support the plural too, but the Targums [קַשׁתָן] and the LXX [τοξεύματος] are singular like the Masoretic Hebrew.
6The name Tabel shows up again in Ezra 4:7 as a Palestinian family name still opposed to Israel.
7Remember this geographical spot by the pool, because it will show up again in Isaiah 36, where Assyria demands Jerusalem’s surrender.
8The Hebrew root here (and of the underlined words below) is the niphal form of שמר.
9Actually from a synonymous root word רפה; the root in the Isaiah 7 & 30 passages is שקט. Isa. 30 also brings in the synonyms נחת ,שוב andבטח.
10The root here is שלמ
11E.J. Young dates it at 734 BC, a difference of only 7 years. Dates of events this long ago are somewhat uncertain.
12Faith is impossible without an outside cause to have faith. Faith does not come naturally to us, it is caused by God (John 12:37-38, 2 Thess. 2:11-15, Ephesians 2:8). If you have faith, it is because God has given it to you, so be thankful to Him!
13The Message also avoids the miracle of the virgin birth of Christ by rendering it, “A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant.”
14Even recently, the religiously-Jewish editor of the Mechon-Mamre Hebrew text which I used as the basis of my study of the book of Isaiah wrote me an email forbidding me from publishing any of my work that incorporated his Hebrew text. The main reason he gave was that I translated almah as “virgin.”
15“These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.” (NKJV)