Yesaya 7:17

7:17 The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s family a time ¹  unlike any since Ephraim departed from Judah – the king of Assyria!” ² 

Yesaya 7:2

7:2 It was reported to the family ³  of David, “Syria has allied with ⁴  Ephraim.” They and their people were emotionally shaken, just as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. ⁵ 

1 Raja-raja 18:16

Elijah Confronts Baal’s Prophets

18:16 When Obadiah went and informed Ahab, the king went to meet Elijah. ⁶ 

Yesaya 8:7

8:7 So look, the sovereign master ⁷  is bringing up against them the turbulent and mighty waters of the Euphrates River ⁸  – the king of Assyria and all his majestic power. It will reach flood stage and overflow its banks. ⁹ 

Yesaya 10:5

The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, ¹⁰ 

a cudgel with which I angrily punish. ¹¹ 

[7:17]  ¹ tn Heb “days” (so KJV, NAB); NASB, NRSV “such days.”

[7:17]  ² sn Initially the prophecy appears to be a message of salvation. Immanuel seems to have a positive ring to it, sour milk and honey elsewhere symbolize prosperity and blessing (see Deut 32:13-14; Job 20:17), verse 16 announces the defeat of Judah’s enemies, and verse 17a could be taken as predicting a return to the glorious days of David and Solomon. However, the message turns sour in verses 17b-25. God will be with his people in judgment, as well as salvation. The curds and honey will be signs of deprivation, not prosperity, the relief announced in verse 16 will be short-lived, and the new era will be characterized by unprecedented humiliation, not a return to glory. Because of Ahaz’s refusal to trust the Lord, potential blessing would be transformed into a curse, just as Isaiah turns an apparent prophecy of salvation into a message of judgment. Because the words “the king of Assyria” are rather awkwardly tacked on to the end of the sentence, some regard them as a later addition. However, the very awkwardness facilitates the prophet’s rhetorical strategy here, as he suddenly turns what sounds like a positive message into a judgment speech. Actually, “the king of Assyria,” stands in apposition to the earlier object “days,” and specifies who the main character of these coming “days” will be.

[7:2]  ³ tn Heb “house.” In this context the “house of David” includes King Ahaz, his family, and the royal court. See also Jer 21:12; Zech 12:7-8, 10, 12, for a similar use of the phrase.

[7:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “rests upon.” Most understand the verb as נוּחַ (nuakh, “rest”), but HALOT 685 s.v. II נחה proposes that this is a hapax legomenon which means “stand by.”

[7:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “and his heart shook and the heart of his people shook, like the shaking of the trees of the forest before the wind.” The singular pronoun “his” is collective, referring to the Davidic house/family. לֵבָב (levav, “heart”) here refers to the seat of the emotions.

[18:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah.”

[8:7]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[8:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “the mighty and abundant waters of the river.” The referent of “the river” here, the Euphrates River, has been specified in the translation for clarity. As the immediately following words indicate, these waters symbolize the Assyrian king and his armies which will, as it were, inundate the land.

[8:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “it will go up over all its stream beds and go over all its banks.”

[10:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.

[10:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”