And he said, Hear then, house of David Is it a small matter for you to weary men, that ye weary also my God?
Ahaz has just refused God's offer of a sign, hiding his unbelief behind a show of reverence. So the prophet turns from the king to the whole royal line: this house has worn out people, and now it is wearing out God.
In the older English translation, the pronouns shift from singular to plural at this exact point. One writer takes that shift as the key to the passage.
The wicked king Ahaz has rejected God's gracious offer of a sign. His pious excuse was that asking would be tempting God. Jehovah then turns from him and speaks to the house of David. He looks beyond the present trouble, which was really a small matter. In that chapter and the two that follow, He gives a magnificent promise of the coming of Immanuel... In verse 11 God speaks to Ahaz: "Ask for yourself." He refuses. Then He addresses the house of David in verses 13 and 14, in the plural. In verses 16 and 17 He addresses Ahaz again, in the singular.
Commentators differ here. Kelly still reads the promise as made to Ahaz himself.
Ahaz had said he would not put God to the test — language that sounds humble. The prophet treats it as a cover.
How often the hypocrisy of unbelief tries in this way to hide its contempt for Jehovah! Its presumption really despises the word of His grace, yet it puts on the clothing of superior reverence and humility. The prophet, however, sees through the trick put forward by an evil heart of unbelief. He now calls the house of David to hear. They must hear not only his reproof, but what the Lord Himself was going to give. Ahaz shrank from God even in His goodness. Flesh never trusts God. It is bent on its own will and instinctively avoids grace, which must assert and give effect to the will of God.
The refusal had a motive. A sign would have cost Ahaz the alliance with Assyria that he had already chosen.
But the unbelieving king refused the offer. His wicked heart dreaded the consequences of such a sign. He did not want to be near to God and get a sign that God was near to him. He felt that in such a case he would have to abandon what God condemns and give up the alliance with the Assyrian.
The verse names two acts of wearying, and the second is the graver one.
The house of David had not only wearied men, but had wearied God also. Ahaz feels God coming near, and shrinks back from the offered sign under a form of piety. God then takes up the matter in grace, as to Messiah, but in the revelation of judgment.
Ahaz was not just one bad king among many. With him, the family of David itself broke down.
In the person of Ahaz the family of David completely abandons its faithfulness... The family of David itself fails in this way, and every hope is ruined. At that point prophecy brings in the promise of Christ to be the support of the faithful. This sign was to be in the family of David itself.
God answers this house with a gift, not a blow. The gift is far larger than anything the king would have dared to ask.
Was it not the most wonderful grace so to promise to such a man? Yet in truth grace condemns unbelief and all other sin as the law never did and never could. Had Ahaz asked any sign within his range of earth and heaven, how immeasurably short of God's it would have been! If man refuses to ask through unbelief, God does not fail to give a sign for His own glory: the virgin's Son, Immanuel!
There is an irony here. The king's unbelief did not damage the promise; it drew it out.
Ahaz, the king of Judah, feared for Jerusalem and the royal line. He had no cause to fear, for God had promised David a son to come from his own body — the one King David called his Lord, the root and offspring of David. The house of David was perfectly secure. So the unbelief of Ahaz became the occasion for this great prediction.
- Wearied. Ahaz's house had already worn out human patience. By refusing God's sign, it wore out God's patience too — and that is the offence Isaiah names.
- Disguised. The refusal wore the clothing of reverence. Unbelief that refuses to come near God often speaks the language of humility.
- Widened. The prophet turns from the one king to "the house of David." The issue is bigger than a local war scare — it is the whole royal line.
- Given. Right where the royal family failed, God gives the sign unasked — Immanuel, born inside that same failing house.
- Secured. Man's refusal did not cancel God's purpose. Grace answered contempt with a gift no one on earth would have thought to ask for.
Therefore will the Lord himself give you a sign Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, and call his name Immanuel.
Two allied kings were about to invade Judah. God offered its king, Ahaz, a sign to steady his faith, and Ahaz turned it down. The answer God gave anyway reaches far past that crisis: a virgin's son named Immanuel, "God with us."
Writers point to the plot that hung over Jerusalem at that moment.
Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, King of Israel, had joined forces against Judah and Jerusalem. They meant to set aside the royal line of David, and with it the Messiah, and to put the son of Tabeal on the throne (v. 6). Even so, "thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass" (v. 7).
Ahaz refused the sign God offered. One writer looks at how God answered a man who did not want Him close.
Ahaz did not like God to draw too near. God answered it with Immanuel — God with us… Was it not the most wonderful grace to promise this to such a man? Yet grace condemns unbelief and every other sin as the law never did and never could. If Ahaz had asked for any sign he could imagine on earth or in heaven, it would have fallen far short of God's sign. If man refuses to ask through unbelief, God does not fail to give a sign for His own glory: the virgin's Son, the woman's Seed, Immanuel!
God had told Ahaz to ask for a sign either in the depth or in the height above. One writer sees both in the sign God chose.
The Virgin's Son becomes THE SIGN, given by God in "the depth" and in "the height" too. Who but the blessed God, infinite in wisdom, could have thought of such a sign or given it? Look at "the depth" of human weakness: that wonderful baby held on the virgin's lap. Yet even there His name tells us of "the height" of His glory — "Immanuel," "God with us."
The Hebrew word behind "virgin" has long been argued over. Writers answer first from the passage itself: a sign has to be something out of the ordinary.
Here the context needs the word to mean virgin, and nothing less. There is no sign or wonder in a young married woman bearing a son. People knew from the very start that the One who would rescue mankind from the serpent, our enemy, must be born of a woman in some unusual way… The virgin's Son is Immanuel, the Lord Jehovah.
There is also the old Greek translation of the Old Testament. Jews made it long before anyone was arguing over this verse.
Christ came, and the prophecy was fulfilled. After that, the Jews worked hard to deny that the Hebrew word means virgin. They said it meant only a young woman, and unbelievers still follow them today. But the Greek version of the Old Testament was made by Jews long before that prejudice arose. They translated the word by the Greek word that can only mean virgin. That one fact undoes the whole attack on the prophecy.
Some have read the child as Ahaz's own son Hezekiah. The arithmetic rules it out.
The idea that Hezekiah was the virgin's son cannot stand. Ahaz reigned sixteen years, and Hezekiah was twenty-five when he began to reign. So Hezekiah was already a boy of at least eight before his father's reign began. Isaiah could not have foretold his birth to Ahaz, who was on the throne by then.
Matthew's Gospel opens with this verse as its first quotation from the Old Testament.
The royal line of David's house was to continue until the Messiah came, but how much further the sign goes! He would be not only the virgin's son, the woman's seed of Genesis 3:15, but "Immanuel." Matthew's Gospel opens by showing Him to be the son of David (v. 1). Then this first quotation from the Old Testament shows Him to be more than a man born by a miracle. He is God Himself come down in grace.
The comfort here reaches past one threatened royal line.
This was enough. God had promised that the Messiah would come from David's line. So God kept the house of David safe until the appointed hour, unworthy as it was… My whole aim is to point to one fact, so full of comfort to the believing heart: God's purposes never fail, however great man's sin may be.
- Threat. Two kings planned to remove David's line from the throne; God said their plan would not stand.
- Refusal. Ahaz would not ask for a sign, so God gave one Himself. Grace answered unbelief with far more than the king would have asked for.
- Sign. A married woman bearing a son is no wonder. The sign needs a virgin — which is how the old Greek translation read it, before any argument began.
- Name. Immanuel means "God with us." The child is man, and He is God — the deepest humility and the highest glory in one person.
- Guarantee. Because the Messiah had to come from David, God kept David's house safe. His purposes hold, however far people fail.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and to choose the good.
Isaiah 7:15 comes straight after the sign of the virgin's Son. It shows how that Son would grow up, and it raises a hard question: how can the One called "God with us" learn anything at all? (Older translations read "butter and honey" for "curds and honey," and "that he may know" for "when he knows.")
Two allied kings were moving to remove David's line from the throne. God's answer to King Ahaz reached much further ahead:
Man would have counted it enough to promise that his son Hezekiah, and then his son, and so on, would succeed him... So for the Jew everything centres on the Messiah. Not only will a remnant return; the promised Seed, the virgin's Son, will be born. Put this birth as far off from Ahaz's day as you please — that only makes the voice of God in prophecy, and the sure mercies promised to David, stand out more clearly... But Immanuel was an assurance that could not fail: no alliance of enemies could ever put down David's house.
The verse describes ordinary human growth: eating, and learning to tell right from wrong. One writer admits the difficulty, then gives the plain sense:
Verse 15 is hard to make out, but we believe it means this. The coming One, though "GOD with us," was born of the virgin. So He would grow up in body and in mind by the laws that govern human life. This we see to be the case in Luke 2:40-52.
That growth was genuine, and it was also unlike anyone else's:
The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was once a little baby. And as He grew up, He learned the taste of things in the same way you have. He ate "butter and honey." He learned to "refuse the evil," and to "choose the good" (Isa. 7:14-16). He had the feelings of a child. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet He was without sin... He was holy; the only holy child, the only holy man, that ever walked this earth.
Commentators differ on what the curds and honey stand for. One reads them as a mark of poverty:
His lowliness. He who was rich became poor for our sake. This poverty seems to be shown in Isaiah 7:15, "butter and honey shall He eat."
Another reads the two foods as pictures of spiritual food, taken in as the Lord listened to the teachers of the law:
Butter is the cream of the milk in solid form. It pictures the Word of God made good to the soul through exercise (churning). It is the Word itself. Honey pictures the ministry of the Word... What the teachers of the law gave that was truly from God was honey, and the Lord received it. But the butter came first — God's own Word made good to the soul in personal exercise. If the blessed Son of Man needed this, how much more do we need both the Word itself and the ministry of the Word, so that we can tell good from evil and choose the good.
The verse says nothing about thrones or kingdoms. It tells you what this Son is like:
Here Emmanuel is present, refusing the evil and choosing the good, just as this prophecy said He would. In this we do not have the glories He will inherit as the son of David and Abraham. We have what He is in Himself and in character — He is God with us. God revealed in human flesh, a man among men. Unlike every name in the family line, His name stays untarnished by any evil thing. He chose the good and refused the evil. He loved righteousness and hated wickedness, as Hebrews 1 puts it, and so He drew out the full and delighted approval of God.
The next verse repeats almost the same words about refusing evil and choosing good. That repeat has puzzled readers, and the Hebrew wording shifts:
It has been noticed that the "son" Immanuel of verse 14 does not appear to be "the youth" of verse 16. That second one refers rather to Shear-jashub, the prophet's own child, who seems to have come with him for this reason... It is worth noting that the Hebrew word here is not strictly "son" or "child," but "the youth" or "lad"... From verse 16 the king was to learn that before the youth (almost certainly Shear-jashub) was old enough to tell right from wrong, the allied kings must disappear from the scene. And so they did.
- Sign. God answered a threatened king with a Person, not a list of heirs. Immanuel is the guarantee that no alliance of enemies can ever end David's house.
- Growth. Verse 15 shows the virgin's Son growing up in body and mind by the ordinary laws of human life — a real child, seen in Luke 2:40-52.
- Food. Commentators differ. Some read the curds and honey as a mark of His poverty. Others see pictures of the Word of God and the ministry of the Word He received.
- Character. Before any throne is named, the prophecy shows what He is. He chose the good, refused the evil, and stayed untouched by any evil thing.
- Us. The Son of Man Himself was fed this way. We need the same food, so that we can tell good from evil and choose the good.