For the head of Syria [is] Damascus, and the head of Damascus [is] Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
Ver. 8. For the head of Syria is Damascus.] Not Jerusalem, as they haply had contrived it; looking upon Jerusalem as a city fatally founded to bear rule, as one saith of Constantinople.
And the head of Damascus is Rezin.] Let him set his heart at rest, and not reach after the dominion of Judah; lest, falling from his high hopes, he lose that he hath already, and cry out with that ambitionist, Sic mea fata sequor.
And within threescore and five years,] sc., From the time that Amos foretold it, Amos 5:27 ; Amo 7:8 that is, from the twenty-fourth year of Uzziah to the sixth of Hezekiah, whenas the ten tribes were carried away by Shalmaneser. 2Ki 17:3-6 Thus Jerome out of Seder Olam. But I like better Piscator's computation, which is thus within sixty-five years, that is, from the fourth year of Ahaz, now current, to the twenty-third of Manasseh, when Ephraim ceased indeed to be a people by the command of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib; whereof see Ezra 4:2 .