VII.
(1) It came to pass in the days of Ahaz. — The whole reign of Jotham comes between Isaiah 6:7. On Isaiah’s life during that period, see Introduction. The work of the prophet now carries him into the main current of history, as recorded in 2 Kings 15:16; 2 Chronicles 28; 2 Chronicles 28, and in Assyrian inscriptions. The facts to be borne in mind are — (1) that the kingdom of Israel under Menahem had already become tributary to Assyria (2 Kings 15:19-20); (2) that the object of the alliance between Pekah, a bold and ambitious usurper, and Rezin, was to organise a resistance against Assyria, such as that in which Uzziah had taken part (Schrader, Keil-Inschriften, pp. 395-421, quoted by Cheyne), that first Jotham (2 Kings 15:37), and then Ahaz, apparently refused to join the confederacy, and that the object of the attack of the allied kings was either to force Ahaz to join, or else to depose him, bring the dynasty of David to a close, and set a follower of their own, probably a Syrian, on the throne of Judah.
But could not prevail against it. — The words obviously refer to a special stage in the campaign. The king of Syria seems to have been the leading spirit of the confederacy. 2 Chronicles 28:5-15 represents Judah as having sustained a great and almost overwhelming defeat. Jerusalem, however, though besieged (2 Kings 16:5) was not absolutely taken (2 Kings 16:5); 2 Kings 16:6 records the capture of the port of Elath, on the Gulf of Akaba, by Rezin.
(1) We may deal with it as though the Gospel of St. Matthew had never been written, as though the facts which it records had no place in the history of mankind. From this point of view we get what seems at first a comparatively simple exposition. The prophet offers a sign to the faithless king, and the sign is this: he points to some young bride in either sense of that word, and says that she shall conceive and bear a son. The fulfilment of that prediction in a matter which lay outside the range of human knowledge was to be the sign for Ahaz and his court, and she should give that son a name which would rebuke the faithlessness of the king. Immanuel, “God with us,” would be a nomen et omen, witnessing, not of an incarnate Deity, but of His living and abiding presence. Who was the mother of the child on this theory we have no data for deciding. As the two other children of the prophet bore, like Hosea’s (Isaiah 7:3; Isaiah 8:3), mysterious and prophetic names, the most probable conjecture seems to be that it was Isaiah’s own wife, still young, and, as it were, still a bride, or possibly a second wife whom he had married, or was about to marry, after the death of his first. Other guesses have pointed to one of the women of the harem of Ahaz who may have been with him when Isaiah spoke. The hypothesis of some critics that such a one became the mother of Hezekiah, and that he was the Immanuel of the prophet’s thoughts, breaks down under the test of dates. Hezekiah, at the time the prophecy was uttered, was a boy of at least nine years of age (2 Kings 16:2; 2 Kings 18:2). Of this child so born Isaiah predicts that he shall grow up in a time of suffering and privation (Isaiah 7:15), and that before he has attained to manhood the confederacy of Rezin and Remaliah shall come to a disastrous end. So far all is at least coherent. Immanuel, as a person, stands on the same level as Shear-jashub, representing a great idea to which Isaiah again appeals in Isaiah 8:8; Isaiah 8:10, but not identified with the Christ, or even with any expectations of the Christ. On the other hand, there are phenomena in Isaiah’s prophetic work at large which this explanation does not adequately include. The land of Israel at least appears to be described as in some peculiar sense the land of Immanuel (Isaiah 8:10). Isaiah is clearly expecting, even in the first volume that bears his name, not to speak of Isaiah 40-66, the arrival, at some undefined point in the future, of one whose nature, work and character, shall be represented by the marvellous series of names of Isaiah 9:6, in whom the spirit of Jehovah, the fear of Jehovah, shall dwell in their fulness — who shall be of the stem of Jesse, and whose reign shall be as the realised ideal of a golden age (Isaiah 11:1-10). That expectation connects itself with a like prophecy, associated as this is with the childbirth of a travailing woman, in Micah 5:3-5. In what relation, we ask, did Immanuel stand to these confessedly Messianic predictions?