Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know... — Better, till he know, or, when he shall know.... — By a strange inversion of the familiar associations of the phrase (Exodus 3:17; Deuteronomy 31:20), probably, as the prophet spoke them, not without a certain touch of the irony of paradox, the words describe a time, not of plenty, but of scarcity. (Comp. Isaiah 7:22.) Fields and vineyards should be left uncultivated (Isaiah 5:9), and instead of bread and meat, and wine and oil, the people, flying from their cities and taking refuge in caves and mountains, should be left to the food of a nomadic tribe, such, e.g., as the Kenites (Judges 5:25; 1 Samuel 14:26; Matthew 3:4). The “butter” of the Bible here, as in Judges 5:25, is the clotted milk which has always been a delicacy with Arabs.
Related Commentaries of Isaiah 7:15
Isaiah 7:15
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.