A Threatened House and a Sign It Did Not Request

The first sentence is nearly identical to 2 Kings 16:5, which records the same campaign, around 734 BC. 2 Chronicles 28:5–6 says Pekah killed a hundred and twenty thousand men of Judah in one day. The three generations named, Ahaz, Jotham, Uzziah, remind the reader of chapter 6: the throne has passed to the grandson.

“Is confederate with” is literally “has settled upon”, as an army settles on a region: Syria’s troops are encamped in Ephraim. Ephraim is the northern kingdom, called by the name of its leading tribe. “The house of David” is Ahaz, addressed as a dynasty and not simply as a man.

The conduit of the upper pool is the very spot where, a generation later, Sennacherib’s officer stood to demand Jerusalem’s surrender (Isaiah 36:2). Ahaz may have been inspecting the water supply before a siege. The fuller’s field lay outside the walls, where cloth was washed and bleached.

“Firebrands” are udim, charred sticks pulled from the fire, like the “brand plucked out of the fire” of Zechariah 3:2. Pekah, named once in 7:1, is from here on only “the son of Remaliah”, a patronymic that may carry contempt, as if his own name were not worth saying.

“Have taken evil counsel” is literally they “have counselled evil”. The chapter is a clash of counsels, and Isaiah answers such schemes in 8:10: “Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought.”

The Hebrew vowels make the name Tav’al, “good for nothing”, instead of Tav’el, “God is good”, probably a deliberate scribal pun. The man was likely an Aramean or Phoenician prince. “Vex it” may mean terrify it or tear it apart, and “make a breach” is to split it open, as a city wall.

“It shall not stand” uses qum, to rise or stand. Proverbs 19:21 sets the same verb against human planning: “the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.” The two kings’ plan is answered in five Hebrew words.

Sixty-five years from about 734 BC reaches the time when Esarhaddon of Assyria settled foreign peoples in Samaria, the colonists who told Zerubbabel they had been brought there “since the days of Esarhaddon” (Ezra 4:2). By then Ephraim had ceased to exist as a people.

The last line is a pun on one root: im lo ta’aminu ki lo te’amenu, if you will not stand firm, you will not be made firm. The root is that of amen. Nathan promised David that his house would be “established” (2 Samuel 7:16) with the same verb; the promise now waits on faith.

The verse says the LORD spoke to Ahaz, without mentioning Isaiah, as if the prophet’s voice and God’s have become one. “Again” marks a second scene, perhaps on another occasion, when Ahaz has had time to think.

“In the depth” may also be read “make it deep as Sheol”, since sha’alah, “ask”, and she’olah, “to Sheol”, differ only in their vowels. The offer spans the underworld to the heavens. “The LORD thy God” still calls him Ahaz’s own God.

Ahaz quotes the law, Deuteronomy 6:16, “Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God.” The piety was a screen: 2 Kings 16:7–8 records that he sent temple silver to Tiglath-pileser with the message, “I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me.”

In verse 11 it was “the LORD thy God”; now Isaiah says “my God”. The “ye” is plural, addressed to the whole royal house. “Weary” is the verb of 1:14, where God was “weary to bear” Judah’s feasts: the court has tired out men and now tries God’s patience too.

The sentence follows the form of a birth announcement, like the angel’s words to Hagar, “Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael” (Genesis 16:11). Here it is the mother who names the child. The name Immanuel returns twice in the next chapter (8:8, 8:10).

“That he may know” can also be read “by the time he knows”: the diet marks an age. Knowing to refuse evil and choose good is the age Deuteronomy 1:39 describes as children who “had no knowledge between good and evil”. “Butter” is curds, a dish of the herdsman.

“Abhorrest” is qats, to dread, the word used when Moab “was distressed because of the children of Israel” (Numbers 22:3). Within about two years Tiglath-pileser took Damascus and killed Rezin (2 Kings 16:9), and Pekah was assassinated by Hoshea (2 Kings 15:30).

The worst days since the kingdom split under Rehoboam (1 Kings 12), two centuries earlier. The help Ahaz bought proved to be the danger: 2 Chronicles 28:20 says the king of Assyria “came unto him, and distressed him, but strengthened him not.”

“Rivers of Egypt” is ye’ore, the Egyptian word for the Nile and its channels, where the delta marshes bred flies. Moses once said the Amorites chased Israel “as bees do” (Deuteronomy 1:44). The “hiss” is the whistle of 5:26, now naming who comes when it sounds.

“Desolate valleys” are steep ravines, a word found only here. “Thorns” is na’atsutsim, thornbushes, found only here and in 55:13, where the promise runs the other way: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree.” The swarm settles into every corner of the land.

“The river” is the Euphrates, the frontier of the east (Joshua 24:2). Shaving a man’s beard was a deliberate humiliation; Hanun of Ammon shaved half the beards of David’s envoys (2 Samuel 10:4). “The hair of the feet” is a euphemism for the body’s hidden hair.

“Nourish” is to keep alive: a man who once kept herds now keeps one heifer and two ewes. “In that day” opens four pictures in a row at the chapter’s end (verses 18, 20, 21 and 23), each a new view of the same day.

Curds were the dish Abraham set before his three visitors (Genesis 18:8) and Jael gave Sisera “in a lordly dish” (Judges 5:25). With few people and much untilled land, milk is plentiful and wild honey is found in the wilderness. It is the diet of the countryside, not of the city.

A thousand vines at a thousand silverlings is a shekel of silver per vine, the price of a prime vineyard; Song of Solomon 8:11 sets the same figure on Solomon’s vineyard at Baal-hamon. The briers and thorns that 5:6 threatened on God’s vineyard have now grown over Judah’s.

Bows and arrows are for hunting: land that once needed the vinedresser now needs the huntsman. Exodus 23:29 warned that an empty land lets “the beast of the field multiply against thee”.

“Digged” is the same rare verb as the vineyard curse of 5:6, “it shall not be pruned, nor digged”, and “treading” is mirmas, the “trodden down” of 5:5. The terraced hillsides that were hoed by hand become ground where oxen are turned loose and sheep trample. The vineyard song is being fulfilled.