Commentary - Isaiah 7:10-17

Bird's-eye view

In this critical section of Isaiah, we are confronted with a king, Ahaz, who is paralyzed by political fear. The northern kingdom of Israel (Ephraim) and Syria have formed an alliance to depose him, and he is, as the previous verses tell us, shaking like a tree in the wind. God graciously sends Isaiah to him with a message of assurance: stand firm in faith, and these two smoldering stumps of firebrands will come to nothing. But faith is a struggle, and so God, in His remarkable condescension, offers Ahaz a sign to bolster his flagging courage. Ahaz, in a display of false piety that is nothing other than rank unbelief, refuses the offer. In response, God declares that He will provide a sign anyway, a sign that will have both immediate and ultimate fulfillments. This is the celebrated prophecy of Immanuel, a sign that points to a near-term deliverance from Syria and Ephraim, but also to the great and final deliverance that would come through the virgin-born Son of God, Jesus Christ. The passage concludes with a stark warning: the very political savior Ahaz was secretly courting, Assyria, would become the instrument of God's judgment against Judah.

Outline

The Text

10 Then Yahweh spoke again to Ahaz, saying,

The word "again" here is weighty. God had already spoken to Ahaz through Isaiah (7:3-9), telling him not to fear. Ahaz's heart is clearly still trembling, still calculating his political options. God, in His patience, does not abandon him to his fears. He condescends to speak again. This is the nature of our God; He is a pursuing God. He does not take our first hesitation as a final answer. He gives us opportunity after opportunity to trust Him.

11 “Ask a sign for yourself from Yahweh your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

This is an astonishing offer. It is a blank check of assurance. God is essentially telling Ahaz, "Name your terms. What will it take to convince you that I am with you and that My word is true?" The scope is unlimited: from the depths of Sheol to the heights of heaven. God is not playing games. He is inviting Ahaz to request a miracle of any magnitude to confirm the promise of deliverance. This is not God tempting man, but rather God accommodating Himself to man's weakness. He is willing to provide tangible proof to anchor Ahaz's faith.

12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not test Yahweh!”

Here is unbelief dressed up in the robes of piety. Ahaz sounds very spiritual, doesn't he? He quotes the principle of Deuteronomy 6:16, "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test." But context is everything. It is not testing God to do what He has just commanded you to do. God commanded him to ask for a sign. To refuse, therefore, is not reverence but rebellion. Ahaz's problem was not a fear of testing God, but a fear that God might actually give him a sign, which would obligate him to trust God and abandon his real plan, which was to send tribute to the king of Assyria and beg for his help (2 Kings 16:7-8). His heart was already set on a political alliance, not a divine one. This pious-sounding refusal was a smokescreen for a heart that had already chosen its savior, and it was not Yahweh.

13 Then he said, “Listen now, O house of David! Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well?

Isaiah's tone shifts dramatically. He drops the direct address to Ahaz and speaks to the entire "house of David." This is no longer just about one faithless king; it is a dynastic failure. The covenant line is faltering. Ahaz has wearied the prophets ("men") with his obstinance, and now he has escalated his sin to the point of wearying God Himself. To weary God is to treat His immense patience and grace as though it were a common thing, to be trifled with and ignored.

14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

Because Ahaz refused to choose a sign, God chooses one for him. And this sign is far greater than anything Ahaz could have imagined. This is the heart of the passage. The Hebrew word for virgin is almah, which means a young woman of marriageable age. While it does not exclusively mean virgin, the context of a divine "sign" presses it in that direction. The translators of the Septuagint, centuries before Christ, understood this and rendered it with the Greek word parthenos, which is unambiguously "virgin." And of course, the Holy Spirit inspires Matthew to quote this very passage to describe the miraculous conception of Jesus (Matt. 1:23). The sign is a child, and His name is His function and identity: Immanuel, which means "God with us." In the face of a faithless king seeking salvation from a pagan emperor, God declares that the only true security for His people is His own presence with them. This is the ultimate answer to all our fears.

15 He will eat curds and honey in order that He will know to refuse evil and choose good.

This verse underscores the true humanity of the promised child. He will not be an apparition or a phantom. He will grow up in the land, eating the food of the land. Curds and honey were staples, particularly in a land that might have been disrupted by war but was still fertile. His knowledge of good and evil will not be instantaneous; it will develop as He grows, just as it does for any human child. This speaks to the mystery of the incarnation: the God-man would have a truly human development, learning and maturing into the fullness of His earthly mission.

16 For before the boy will know to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.

Here is the short-term application of the sign for Ahaz. God ties the grand, ultimate prophecy to a concrete, verifiable, near-term event. Before a child conceived at that time could reach the age of moral accountability, perhaps two or three years, the threat that was causing Ahaz such terror would be gone. The kings of Syria and Israel would be swept away. This was God's way of saying, "You can trust My long-range plan for Immanuel because you will see My short-range plan for these two kings come to pass before your very eyes."

17 Yahweh will bring on you, on your people, and on your father’s house days which have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah, the king of Assyria!”

And here is the terrible punchline. Here is the divine irony. Ahaz refused to trust God for deliverance and instead secretly put his trust in the king of Assyria. So God says, in effect, "You want the king of Assyria? You will get the king of Assyria." The very nation Ahaz looked to as his savior would become the instrument of God's judgment. God would use this "hired razor" (cf. Isa. 7:20) to bring a devastation upon Judah more severe than anything since the kingdom had divided centuries before. This is a standing principle: when we reject God's appointed means of salvation and turn to idols, God often judges us by giving us exactly what we asked for, letting our idols enslave and destroy us.

Application

The confrontation between Isaiah and Ahaz is a perennial one. We are all tempted, like Ahaz, to be practical atheists. We say we believe in God, but when a crisis hits, our first instinct is to look for a political, financial, or military solution. We trust in our modern-day "Assyrians." God comes to us, as He did to Ahaz, and says, "Trust me. Stand firm in faith." And to help us, He gives us His promises, chief among them the promise of His presence: Immanuel, God with us.

We must also be wary of Ahaz's false piety. It is possible to use the Bible and religious language to excuse our disobedience. When God's commands are clear, our job is not to find spiritual-sounding reasons to evade them, but to simply obey. Ahaz's refusal to "test" God was a refusal to trust God.

Finally, we see that God's plan of salvation cannot be thwarted by the faithlessness of men. Ahaz's refusal did not cancel the sign. In fact, it became the occasion for God to reveal His plan in an even more glorious way. The failure of the house of David in Ahaz only served to highlight the need for a better King from the house of David, one who would be born of a virgin and who would truly be "God with us." Our security, our hope, and our salvation are not found in the machinations of earthly rulers, but in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Immanuel.