Isaiah 7:20 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Lord shall shave Shall utterly spoil, as shaving takes away the hair; with a razor that is hired Hired by Ahaz; for he purchased the aid of the Assyrians with large sums of silver and gold, 2 Kings 16:7-8. And so the prophet signifies the just judgment of God, in scourging them with a rod of their own making. By them beyond the river Euphrates, called the river, by way of eminence, beyond which Assyria lay. By the king of Assyria By the successive kings of the Assyrian empire, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and especially by Nebuchadnezzar, who, having subdued the Assyrian monarchy, from thenceforth was king of Assyria as well as of Chaldea. The head and the hair of the feet, &c. This highly parabolical mode of expression is used to denote “the utter devastation of the country from one end to the other, and the plundering of the people from the highest to the lowest. The hairs of the head are those of the highest order in the state; those of the feet, or lower parts, are the common people: the beard is the king, the high-priest, the very supreme in dignity and majesty: for the eastern people have always held the beard in the highest veneration, and have been extremely jealous of its honour.”