King Ahaz
7
📚✭And it came about in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but they could not conquer it. 2 📚✭And the house of David was told, saying, “Syria has become an ally of Ephraim”. And his heart, and the heart of his people, was shaken like the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind.3 📚✭Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-Jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the road to the Fuller’s Field, 4 📚✭and say to him, ‘Be careful, and be calm. Do not be afraid or fainthearted because of these two stubs of smouldering firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the son of Remaliah, 5 📚because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have made an evil plot against you, saying, 6 “Let us go up against Judah, and trouble it, and let us make a break in its wall for ourselves, and set the son of Tabeal as king over it”. 7 📚Thus says the Lord God✭, ‘It will not stand, nor will it come to pass. 8 📚For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within sixty-five years✭ Ephraim will be broken, no longer to be a people. 9 📚And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son✭. If you will not believe, surely you will not be established✭.’ ”
10 📚✭Moreover, the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 11 📚“Ask the LORD your God for a sign for yourself. Ask it to be either in the deep, or in the height above”.
12 📚✭But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I put the LORD to the test”.
13 📚✭And he said, “Listen now, O house of David! Is it so small a thing for you to weary men, that you will weary my God also?
The virgin’s Son
14 📚✭Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel. 15 📚✭He will eat curds and honey, when he knows to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 16 📚For before the child will know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings✭ you dread will be deserted. 17 📚The LORD will bring the king of Assyria on you, and on your people, and on your father’s house, days that have not come from the day that Ephraim✭ broke away from Judah”.
God will use Assyria to punish the Jewish nation
18 📚And it will happen in that day, that the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the furthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee✭ that is in the land of Assyria. 19 📚✭And they will come and all of them will settle on the desolate valleys, and in the crevices of the rocks, and on all the thorn bushes, and on all the pastures. 20 📚✭In the same day the Lord will shave the head and the hair of the legs with a hired razor, with those beyond the River, with the king of Assyria, and will also remove the beard. 21 📚✭And it will happen in that day, that a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep. 22 📚And it will happen, because of the abundance of milk they give, that he will eat curds; for everyone left in the land✭ will eat curds and honey. 23 📚✭And it will happen in that day, that in every place where there had been a thousand vines worth a thousand silver shekels, there will be only briars and thorns. 24 📚Men will come there with arrows and with bows, because all the land will become briars and thorns. 25 📚And as for all the hills that were dug with a mattock, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns; but it will become a place for sending out oxen, and where sheep walk.