Isaiah 7:7-9 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Thus saith the Lord God, &c.— We have in these verses the grounds of the consolation given to Ahaz, namely, the overthrow of this expedition; with an admonitory caution to the Jews. Vitringa renders the 8th and 9th verses, For Damascus shall be the head only of Syria, and Rezin the head of Damascus; and within sixteen years and five Ephraim shall be broken, and be no longer a people. Isaiah 7:9. And the head of Ephraim shall be Samaria, and the head of Samaria Remaliah's son. But, in refutation of the alteration proposed in the number, Bishop Newton has the following remarks: "This prophesy was delivered in the first year of Ahaz, king of Judah, (see 2 Kings 15:37.) and it was to comfort him and the house of David in their difficulties and fears from the confederacy of the kings, that Isaiah was commissioned to assure him, that the kings of Syria and of Ephraim, that is to say, of Israel, should remain only the heads of their respective cities: they should not prevail against Jerusalem; and within threescore and five years Israel should be so broken as to be no more a people. The learned Vitringa is of opinion, that instead of sixty and five it should be sixteen and five. Sixteen and five, as he confesses, is an odd way of computation for one and twenty: but, without recourse to any alteration, the thing may be explicated otherwise: for, from the first of Ahaz, compare sixty and five years, in the reigns of Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh, and the end of them will fall about the twenty-second year of Manasseh; when Esar-haddon, king of Assyria, made the last deportation of the Israelites, and planted other nations in their stead, and in the same expedition probably took Manasseh captive, and carried him to Babylon. See 2 Chronicles 33:11. Ezra 2:10. 2 Kings 17:24. Ephraim was broken from being a kingdom before; but now he was broken from being a people, and, from that time to this, what account can be given of the people of Israel, as distinct from the people of Judah? Where have they subsisted all this while, or what is their condition at present?" See Newton on the Prophesies, vol. 1: p. 204 and Calmet. The meaning of the last clause in the ninth verse is, "If you do not give faith to what I say, you shall not be confirmed; the state of your affairs, whether political or ecclesiastical, shall not be established." The design of the prophet was, to raise up their fainting minds to a confidence in God, rather than in the king of Assyria. See a remarkable passage parallel to this in 2 Chronicles 20. It is very observable, that, though the Syrians and Ephraimites fell from their vain hopes, and did very little hurt to Judaea, yet the Assyrians, in whom the incredulous Jews had placed their hope, afflicted, spoiled, and distressed both them and their king. See 2 Chronicles 28:20-21.