Isaiah 7: Faith in Immanuel

A sermon by Nate Wilson, delivered 13 Aug 2006 and 4 Dec 2022


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.


SETTING:


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 person that God uses to call King Ahaz to trust in God rather than man is Isaiah’s son, Shuar-yashuv, which means “A remnant shall return.”

God also communicated to King Ahaz through direct commands spoken by the prophet Isaiah in v.4 “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, do not let your heart faint.”

The third way that God called Ahaz to trust in Him was through Signs.

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)

9