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.
The head of Syria (is) Damascus, and the head of Damascus (is) Rezin - i:e., in both Syria and Israel the capital shall remain as it is: they shall not conquer Judah, but each shall possess only his own dominions.
Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. As these words break the symmetry of the parallelism in this verse, either they ought to be place, after "Remaliah's son," in Isaiah 7:9, or else they refer to some older prophecy of Isaiah, or of Amos (as the Jewish writers represent), parenthetically; to which, in Isaiah 7:9 the words "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established" correspond in parallelism. One deportation of Israel happened within one or two years from this time, under Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings 15:29). Another, in the reign of Hoshea, under Shalmaneser (2 Kings 17:1-6), was about 20 years after. But the final one, which utterly 'broke' up Israel so as to be "not a people," accompanied by colonization of Samaria with foreigners, was under Esarhaddon, who carried away Manasseh, king of Judah, also, in the 22nd year of his reign, 65 years from the utterance of this prophecy (cf. Ezra 4:2-3; Ezra 4:10, with 2 Kings 17:24; 2 Chronicles 33:11) (Usher). The event, though so far off, was enough to assure the people of Judah that as God, the Head of the theocracy, would ultimately interpose to destroy the enemies of His people, so they might rely on Him now.