Isaiah chapter 07

CHAPTER VII.

Immanuel

IN the seventh chapter, we commence a section of the prophecy which runs in a connected manner to the end of the twelfth chapter, and has been called “ The Book of Immanuel.” It deals in a wonderful and comprehensive manner with the fortunes of Israel from the days of Ahaz, King of Judah, to the enthronement of the Holy One in the midst of Zion (xii. 6). The Holy One there enthroned amidst shoutings of rejoicing and salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The apostle Peter, speaking of this time, exhorts the brethren to endure the fiery trial of their faith with the glorious end in view : the salvation of their lives (1 Pet. i. 9) ; and adds, “ Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” Again, in his second epistle, exhorting “ those of like precious faith ” to “ be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets,” he says : “ Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Bearing these exhortations in mind, and having “ senses exercised by reason of use,” we are enabled in great measure to understand the words of the prophet.

In enquiring “ what manner of time,” the Spirit of Christ signifies we must, of course, enquire concerning the time and circum­stances under which the word was given. Apart from a study of the history of the case, we might conclude from this section of Isaiah that Ahaz was a good king, and be disconcerted somewhat at the judgments denounced upon him. Isaiah vii. opens thus : “And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of

Uzziah, King of Judah, that Rezin, the King of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, King of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of Devoid, 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.” We read in 2 Kings xv. 30 that “ Hoshea, the son of Elah, made a conspiracy against Pekah, the son of Remaliah, and smote him and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham, the son of Uzziah ”—that is, twenty years after he began to reign, for in verse 33 it is said (as also in 2 Chron. xxvii. 1) that “ he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem.” This would make the death of Pekah happen in the fourth year ot the reign of Ahaz.

There were more incursions than one of Syria and Ephraim in the days of Ahaz. The troublous times spoken of in Is. vii. 1-2 had to do with his early years, and the “ evil counsel ” of the confederate kings of Syria and Israel was, “ 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.” These circumstances and this time were deemed fitting by God for a further exhibition to “ the house of David,” to Ephraim, Syria, and those of the Gentiles to whom the word of His grace should afterwards come, of His eternal purpose concerning Judah and Jerusalem, and the throne of David in the hands of Immanuel, the Holy One and King of His appoint­ment.

The phrase “ the house of David ” of verses 2 and 13 is peculiar, and not accidental—not a poetic flourish put in by “ the will of man.” It imports that the matter before us was not merely personal to Ahaz (who was not the type of man that God honours with revelations), but was national and far-reaching in its bearing and developments.

Ahaz, the son of Jotham, we learn from the parallel accounts in 2 Kings and 2 Chron., came to the throne at the early age of twenty years, reigned sixteen years, died leaving behind him a bad record, and was buried in Jerusalem but not in the sepulchres of the Kings. A glance at his history makes the understanding of this section of Isaiah clear.

“ He walked in the way of the Kings of Israel, yea and made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. Then Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, King of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to war : and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him ” (2 Kings

16. 3-5).

Later, however, Judah was smitten with great slaughter before Rezin and Pekah, and Zichri a mighty man of Ephraim (2 Chron. xxviii.), and “ Israel carried away captive of their brethren 200,000, women, sons and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria.” It was on this occasion that the prophet Oded rebuked Israel on behalf of the captives, telling them of their own sins, and so influenced the princes of Ephraim that “ they rose up and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren,” and then returned to Samaria.

Untouched by this beautiful and striking interposition of God on behalf of Judah, and being further harassed by the Edomites and Philistines, Ahaz hired help of Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria, spoiling the temple to provide the means. Tiglath-Pileser accordingly took Damascus, and slew Rezin. Ahaz went to Damascus to meet his victorious ally. While there he was struck with the pattern of a certain altar, and sent the design to Jerusalem to Urijah the priest, who had a facsimile ready against the king’s return. On his return, Ahaz displaced the brazen altar, and set up the idolatrous creation in its place, reserving the brazen altar to “ enquire by.” He was undeterred by the example of his ancestor Uzziah, and “ trespassing yet more,” “ sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus which smote him : and he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel ” (2 Chron. xxviii. 23). His further desecration of the holy things, destruction of the vessels.

closing the doors of the temple, and multiplying altars in every corner of Jerusalem, are described in the histories of Kings and Chronicles.

Such was the character of the king in whose days Isaiah, Oded, Micah, and Hosea ministered “ the word of the Lord ” in messages of indignation and judgment, blended with promise of mercy for “ the latter days.”

In the time of trouble pertaining to the invasion of Judah by Syria and Ephraim, Isaiah is commissioned by God to meet King Ahaz at a certain spot and calm his fears. A writer of repute has inferred from this that Isaiah must have been of the seed royal. But the conclusion is not justifiable : Amos penetrated into the King’s Court at Bethel, though originally but a herdman and gatherer of sycamore fruit, and he excused his presence and message by direct reference to the command of God (Amos vii. 13-15). The fact is, that of Isaiah’s extraction and personal history we know little or nothing beyond the word or two of chapter i. 1, which describes him as “ the son of Amoz.” It is evidently not designed that we should know in these days. If it please God to let us take place with “ all the prophets ” in His glorious kingdom we may hereafter know much. Meanwhile, personal curiosity is baffled, and attention directed to the message rather than the messenger.

The divine command was : “ Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shear-jashub (Remnant-shall-return), thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field —(that is, to the point where the besiegers were against the city, and where afterwards Sennacherib’s blasphemous captain challenged the God of Israel to deliver Jerusalem—chap, xxxvi. 2). "Goforth . . . and say unto him, Take heed and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint­hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah ”—and the message recounts their policy of overthrowing the Kingdom of David and founding a new dynasty, and resumes, verse 7—“ 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 Rezin, and within three score 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, snrely ye shall not be established.”

There are heads and heads : the apostle Paul, speaking of a certain matter, says : “ I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ . . . and the head of Christ is God.” Here were certain powers in the Lord’s land— Immanuel’s land—besieging “ the city of the Great King.” Their relation to the Head of all, was that of His briefly tolerated instruments of chastisement. Of Ephraim’s follies the Spirit of God in the prophet Hosea speaks expressly : “ They have set up kings but not by me : they have made princes and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols that they may be cut off ” (Hos. viii. 4). The divine estimation of and sentence against these self-appointed “ heads ” in threatening array against the Kingdom of David is thus presented to Ahaz by Isaiah. They were simply “ two tails ”—“ the two tails of these smoking firebrands.” They would not, like Immanuel, be “ plucked from the burning ” (Zech. iii. 2), but would pass away in the consumption decreed of God for all the seed of the serpent. Less than sixty-five years saw the fall of both Syria and Ephraim, Rezin having been slain by Tiglath-Pileser, and Pekah by Hoshea. Syria became a province of Assyria ; and Samaria, in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth of Hoshea, fell before Shalmanesei, and thus the ten-tribed kingdom of Ephraim passed away for ever.

“ Moreover the Lord spake again to 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. And he said, Hear ye now, 0 house of David : Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also ? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign :—

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

And shall call his name Immanuel.

Butter and honey shall he eat,

That he may know how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” This was to be a sign to the house of David, not to Ahaz personally. He had expressly refused the invitation of God to ask

a sign. He would be dead and gone seven hundred years and more before Immanuel’s days. Hostile criticism, rejecting Jesus, fixes on Ahaz and his time, and asks with an air of triumph, How much of a sign was the birth of Jesus to him ? But such criticism has to wrest the Scripture even to appear to snatch a victory. The words of the prophet altogether exclude such rigid personal construction. Jewish rejecters of Jesus (in their very rejection and “ abhorring ” fulfilling the later words of the prophet), have exhausted their ingenuity in unsuccessful endeavour to expound the sign apart from him. Emphasising the fact that the definite article appears in the Hebrew (“ the virgin,” not “ a virgin,” see R.V.), and altering “ virgin ” to “ young woman,” they have even striven to prove that “ Hezekiah King of Judah ” was the man of sign in question ! But it is " hard to kick against the pricks.” Hezekiah, though a worthy king, and a pleasant contrast with idolatrous Ahaz, was no such sign to the house of David. He was not a virgin’s son. He was not “ God with ” Israel, neither did Syria and Ephraim fall before he knew “ to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

But in the face of the New Testament Scriptures it were vain to follow too closely such desperately ingenious struggles to get rid of the authority of God’s Anointed. Matt. i. 22, 23, concerning “ the birth of Jesus Christ,” is all sufficient : “ Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saving, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted is, God with us.”

As to the definite article, the reason and propriety of its appearance may be gathered from Mary’s answer to the salutation of the angel Gabriel (Luke i. 38) : “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.” This was a recog­nition of her honoured position as “ the virgin ’* of Isaiah’s prophecy —“ the handmaid of the Lord ” (Ps. lxxxvi. 16 : cxvi. 16) as much present to the mind of God from the beginning of His purpose, as was her illustrious Son.

As to the proposition to alter the rendering of the word altnah, it is entirely unwarrantable. The matter was to be “ a sign,” a “ wonder,” and the usage of the term in indisputable and expressly defined cases of virginity as in Gen. xxiv. 43 (Rebecca), and Ex. ii. 8 (the sister of Moses), justifies the received translation. Further, the necessities of the case from the very earliest promise of God (Gen. iii. 15), that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, effectually exclude any other idea, as also does the wonderful name the Son was to bear.

“ Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.” What kind of a diet was this to be ? Not literal butter and honey, of course, for thousands of Israelites ate that, who were distinguished more by the opposite character­istics of refusing the good and choosing the evil. On the occasion of his conversation with the Samaritan woman, when Jesus, " being wearied with his journey,” sat at Jacob’s well, he had something to say about his “ meat.” In answer to the importunities of his disciples, he said : “ I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” And after their wondering enquiry of each other as to the source and nature of the supply, he added : “ My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work ” (John iv. 32, 34). The doing of that will involved the indwelling of the word of God in which, by the Spirit of God, he was of “ quick understanding.”

The Scriptures frequently speak of the word as food to be eaten. “ The Lord thy God humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know ; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.” So said Moses to Israel (Deut. viii. 3). “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food,” said Job (ch. xxiii. 12).                                                                                    “ Thy

words were found, and I did eat them ; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart ” (Jer. xv. 16). Words that in their “ reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting ” thus establish and delight the new man, are “ butter and honey.” The words of the covenant-breaking enemy, said the Psalmist, “ were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords ” (Psa. lv. 21). The sham illustrates the true. Another Psalm, the 119th (a long panegyric of the word of God), says : “ How sweet are thy words unto my taste—yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way ” (verse 103). Solomon uses the same metaphor as Isaiah vii. His exhortation runs thus : “ My son, eat thou honey, because it is good ; and the honeycomb which is sweet to thy taste. So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy sold, when thou heist found it, then there shall be a reward and thine expectation shall not be cut off ” (Prov. xxiv. 13-14).

All this finds pre-eminent illustration in Immanuel, who refused the evil and chose the good, who “ loved righteousness and hated iniquity,” and is therefore “ anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows ” (Heb. i. 9). He is himself the bread of life, antitypical of the manna with which God fed Israel in the wilderness. “ Labour not for the meat which perisheth,” said He to the people that fol­lowed Him because He had miraculously multiplied bread, “ but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you : for him hath God the Father sealed ” (John vi. 27). “ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you ” (verse 53). And pacifying his disciples, who complained of the “ hard saying,” he added in explanation : “ It is the Spirit that maketh alive, the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life ” (verse 63). All Immanuel’s " seed ” eat of the same ” spiritual meat,” and esteem it exceedingly; and by it alone in its daily assimilation, “ know ” and are encouraged to “ refuse the evil and choose the good ” in hope of the day of recompense that lies ahead.

Long before Immanuel’s childhood, the land abhorred by Ahaz was “ forsaken of both her kings.” In the days of Jesus, the Romans had incorporated it in their ” iron ” dominion, and still long ages of desolation awaited “ the glorious land.” But these are now nearly expired, and the signs of deliverance are many and bright.

But judgment was to come upon Ahaz, verse 17 : “ The Lord shall bring upon thee and upon thy people and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the days that Ephraim departed from Judah ; even the King of Assyria.” The history of the Kings tells us that “ the Lord brought Judah low because of Ahaz, King of

Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the Lord. And Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria, came unto him, and distressed him, but strengthened him not ” (2 Chron. xxviii. 20). The Assyrian whom Ahaz hired with the spoil of the temple, to deliver him from Syria and Israel his enemies, became the Lord’s hired razor (verse 20) to make Judah bare. Jeremiah and Ezekiel illustrate the same figure of judgment.

To Jeremiah God said : “ Cut off thine hair and cast it away ... for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath ” (ch. vii. 29). Ezekiel, symbolically representing the des­truction upon destruction that was before Jerusalem in his days, was commanded by God, saying, “ Son of Man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard ; then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair. Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled ; and thou shalt take a third part and smite about it with a knife ; and a third part shalt thou scatter in the wind ; and I will draw out a sword after them. Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number and bind them in thy skirts. Then take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire, for thereof shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel ” (Ezek. v. 1-3).

Thus the shaved, burnt, and scattered hair of the prophet represented Israel in the successive visitations of fire and sword that came upon their evil generations. One of the features of the representation of Christ in glory is “ the hair of his head like the pure wool ” (Dan. vii. 9). “ His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow” (Rev. i. 14). In those days the shaving, smiting, burning, and scattering of Israel for their iniquity will be a thing of the past, and. Immanuel surrounded by the multitude of the immortal redeemed, will have gathered purified and repentant Israel unto himself ; yea, even the “ razor ” itself shall have been transformed, for “ in that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land ; whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance ” (Isa. xix. 24). Egypt and Assyria, upon whom Israel leant when they 

forsook God, and whom God therefore used as instruments of chastise­ment, will then have borne their measure of chastening and humiliation and figure among the “ many nations joined unto the Lord ” in the day when he shall “ inherit Judah, his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again ” (Zech. ii. 12).

Notwithstanding the iniquity and desolation there was to be good food for the elect remnant: “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 everyone eat that is left in the land ” (verses 21-22). That is the same food that was to nourish Immanuel (verse 15), and he himself is enigmatically before us in verse 21.

“ A young cow : ” that is literally “ a heifer of the herd.” When God was about to confirm to Abram the “ covenant concerning Christ ” (Gen. xv.), He told him to take among other animals for sacrifice “ an heifer of three years old.” About five hundred years afterwards, when Israel had gone through much of the experience of which God spoke to Abram, He appointed in their midst, as an ordin­ance for purification, the water of separat on made with the ashes of “a red heifer without spot,wherein was no blemish, and upon which never came yoke ” (Num. xix.). The substance of this, Paul identifies with Christ (Heb. ix. 13-14).

As to the “ two sheep : ” Christ is at once “ the Lamb of God,’’ and the “ Great Shepherd of the Sheep.” The two ideas are blended as it were in Isa. liii. : “ All we like sheep have gone astray . . . the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all .                                                                                            .                                                                                            . he is

brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth.” He taught the Jews that he was at once the door of the sheepfold and the shepherd that entered by the door, an involution of ideas that is unintelligible apart from the understanding of the truth concerning “the blood of the ever­lasting covenant ” (Heb. xiii. 20). He said that not only of Israel were his sheep: “ Other sheep I have which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd ” (Jno. x. 16.)

Christ: the “ Word made flesh,” in the days of his flesh, by his ministering of the word in Israel, “ nourished ” a remnant, which, being thus begotten by the Father with the word of His truth (Jas. i. 18), became in turn the ministers of the same word, and shepherds of the sheep. “ Feed my sheep,” said the Lord to Peter ; and in doing it, Peter thus addressed the “ scattered strangers, elect according to the foreknowledge of God,” “ Laying aside all malice, and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, as new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” Growth apart from the milk and honey of the word is impossible. It is the characteristic of the latter-day revival of the hope of Israel, that its posses­sors are “ begotten ” by the Word, “ desire ” it, and “ grow thereby.”

If many do not exhibit such characteiistics, it is because they do not really belong to it. “ Everyone left in the land,” whether the phrase be taken to refer to the remnants which have in the past escaped from the judgments that have come, or to the elect remnant that shall at last enter into the “ eternal inheritance,” conformed and must conform to the pattern of Immanuel in the assimilation of the food and nourishment of the Father’s own appointment and providing.

Because of the neglect of this has been all the evil of the past. The desolate land is but the monument of Divine indig­nation upon the most favoured people of His choice, “ because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel ” (ch. v. 24). “ With arrows and with bows shall men come thither ; because all the land shall become briars and thorns ” (chap. vii. 24). Apostolic exhortation to “ go on unto perfection,” uses this warning: “ The earth which drinketh in the rain which cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, whose end is to be burned ” (Heb. vi. 7). The briar-and-thorn-choked land of Israel was consumed by the invader, but some “ good ground ” escaped. “ And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briars and thorns; but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep” (verse 25).

The meaning of the concluding words of this seventh chapter is illustrated in the work of Christ and the apostles. He was “ the sower ” in the land, who, in the “ sending forth ” of the twelve upon the mountains of Israel, figuratively “ sent forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass ” (ch. xxxii. 20). Paul does not hesitate to appropriate the figure of the patiently labouring ox. “ It is wiitten in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen ? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes ? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thrasheth in hope should be partaker of his hope ” (1 Cor. ix. 9). Nevertheless, the apostle was extremely careful in the exercise of his undoubted privileges lest he should hinder the Gospel of Christ.

His day of labour in “ treading out the corn ” has long ceased. The monument of it is preserved in the many records of his works and sufferings. Many generations since have contributed their number of “ oxen and sheep.” Far less directly “ sent forth,” and in the times of darkness succeeding the Apostolic era so few as to be scarcely discernible, they have nevertheless patiently fulfilled their appointed day. Briars and thorns have multiplied and do multiply exceedingly, not only in the Lord’s land, but in all lands where His name is nominally in the ascendant. The desolate mountains of Israel still wait His return, one of whose functions it is to burn up the sons of Belial “ as thorns thrust away,” a work the true magnitude and terror of which, can never be adequately estimated this side of its accomplishment.