After the Lord had given the unspeakably blessed promise, concerning the coming of Christ, that his people in those degenerate times might have comfort, he proceeds to his solemn threatenings: and most solemn and awful indeed they are. Ahaz, in his impiety, had been looking to Assyria for help; and to purchase it, had robbed the house of the Lord of the silver and gold, 2 Kings 16:8. The Lord therefore tells him, that this very king shall be the instrument of his ruin. And whereas he feared the weapons of men, the Lord will make even the flies of Egypt, and the bee of Assyria, those little feeble insects, the instruments of his misery. Reader! think what a state of ruin the sinner is brought to, whose very comforts turn to sorrows; and in the things wherein he chiefly proposed to himself happiness; the bitterness of all his afflictions abound! Oh! for grace to read these things with a spiritual improvement, that we may learn how dreadful it must be to have God for our foe, who can convert our very blessings into curses, and make that which was intended for good, be unto us an occasion of falling. The ruin by reason of sin, in the representation made in the close of the chapter, of sharing the land of inhabitants, that briers and thorns come up; the brood of cattle restrained, and all the tokens of want and misery take place; if read spiritually, may serve to show how the mind is exposed and laid open to every evil, where Christ is not. Let Ephraim alone, he is joined to his idols; if the Lord saith thus of church or people, there needs no more to the most finished misery. Lord! I would say for myself and Reader, Oh! take not away thine Holy Spirit from us! Hosea 4:17; Psalms 51:11.
Isaiah 7:17-25
17 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.
18 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.
19 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.e
20 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.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;
22 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.f
23 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.
24 With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.
25 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.