IN the last chapter we saw the glory of Christ revealed, and the assurance of a holy seed after the judgment of the land and people. We have now a weighty sequel recounting facts which occurred not in the year King Uzziah died, nor even in the days of his successor, but in those of Ahaz. It could not otherwise have been clearly gathered how the glory of Christ was actually to appear. Our chapter solves this question, and connects His revelation with His rejection and His final and everlasting triumph. (Chap. 8., 9:1-7.) The first part alone comes before us now.
The occasion was the offensive alliance of Resin, King of Syria, with Pekah, Remaliah's son and King of Israel, against Judah and Ahaz. “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 wood are moved with the wind.” There were they in great fear, where no fear was, and this alas! in Jerusalem and David's house; and no wonder, for the heir of David's throne walked not like David, his father, but in the ways of the King of Israel or worse, and made Judah naked and transgressed sore against the Lord. Panic stricken, yet in no way driven by his distress to God, Ahaz is met by the prophet, with his son Shear-jashub, who says from the Lord, “Take heed and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal,” &c. (Ver. 1-6.)
How foolish, as well as base, is unbelief! It is joyous and confident when a laboring volcano is about to burst; it is filled with anguish, when God is going to deal with the evils it dreads. In this case, how could He behold in peace a compact between apostate Israel and heathen Syria? It was not merely that their enterprise, if successful, must vex Judah, but set aside David's line. It was a blow at the Messiah, little as they might have thought of this; and the oath and honor of God were thus at stake. But “thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Resin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, 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.” (Ver. 7-9.)
How blessed are the ways of God! The effort to destroy, which seemed so awful to its objects, especially as their conscience was bad, led at once to the revelation of the doom of the destroyers. The Syrian chief would not avail to shield more guilty Ephraim; for it was sentenced—yea to be so broken as not to be a people within sixty-five years; and so it was to the letter. (2 Kings 17) The chief of Ephraim's capital is paraded before us like his ally in due form and title; but who were they to dispute the counsels of God as to David's Royal line, let Ahaz be personally unbelieving, as he might be and was? God at least is God, and His word shall stand forever, though surely the infidel shall not be established.
But this was only the prelude to the weightier announcement that follows: “Moreover, the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God: ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.” (Ver.10-12.) Alas! how often the hypocrisy of unbelief thus essays to hide its contempt of the Lord; and thorough presumption, which really despises the word of His grace, assumes the garb of superior reverence and humility. The prophet, however, sees through the cheat put forward by an evil heart of unbelief and calls now on the house of David to hear, not alone his reproof, but the sign which the Lord Himself was to give. “Behold a [or, the] virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel.” Marvelous grace so to promise to such a man! Yet in truth, grace condemns unbelief and all other sin as the law never did or could. Had Ahaz asked any sign within his range of earth or heaven, how immeasurably short of God's! If man refuses to ask through unbelief, God fails not to give a sign for His own glory: the virgin's son, the woman's seed, Emmanuel! What thoughts and feelings cluster here together! The security of David's royal line and rights, what was it more than the predicted ruin of plotting Ephraim, in the presence of the sign, the truth of truths—God with us? Yet was it the assurance, if its grandeur betokened other and higher glories, that no conspiracy could prosper which struck at this Root and Offspring of David.
It is scarcely necessary perhaps, and yet for some readers it may be a help, to observe that the “son,” Emmanuel, in verse 14, is not “the child” of verse 16, which last refers rather to Shear-jashub, who for this reason seems to have accompanied the prophet. “For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrent shall be forsaken of both her kings.” It will be noticed, accordingly that here we have Isaiah turning from “the house of David,” “ye” and “you,” to “thou,” &c. i.e., Ahaz. Compare verses 13, 14 with 10, 17. And it is certain that the prophet's child, Shear-jashub, had the character of a “sign,” (see chap. 8:18,) though and of course very distinct from the great sign, the virgin's son, From verse 16, the king was to learn, that before that child, then present, arrived at years of discretion, the allied kings must disappear from the scene. And so they did: for three years more scarce passed over its youthful head before the kings of Israel and Syria fell before the treachery or might of their enemies.
Should guilty Ahaz and Judah, then, go unpunished? In no wise, as the prophet proceeds to let him know. “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. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the 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 bushes.” (Ver. 17-19.) The faith of Hezekiah might stay the execution of Judah's judgment, and the King of Assyria was rebuked for a season. But even Josiah, faithful as he was, suffered for his rash opposition to “the fly that is in the uttermost parts of the rivers of Egypt;” and “the bee that is in the land of Assyria” stung yet more fiercely at the summons of Jehovah. “In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the King of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard. And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two 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 land. And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with bows shall men come thither, because all the land shall become briers and thorns. And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.” (Ver. 20-25.) The character of Israel's land should thus be wholly changed; and so complete the desolation ensuing that the owner of a young cow and two sheep would find the amplest range for his scanty flock in the wildernesses that succeeded to the rich cornfields of Palestine, and himself be fed on the nourishment proper to wandering hordes, not on the food of cultivated lands. What a picture! Yes, and the best of vineyards (comp. Song of Sol. 8.) becomes a bed of briers and thorns; and men cannot pass unprotected by bows and arrows; and the carefully tended hills are turned into a place for oxen and lesser cattle. So dark as well as minute are the lines in which the sorrowful change in Judea is set before her king.