1. Isaiah Chapter 7 The Book of
This introductory segment provides the basic information about the historical situation that Judah faced, plus God's command concerning that situation.

2. Isaiah – Chapter 7:1
1And it came to pass 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 toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. 
In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham: Ahaz was a wicked king of Judah, worshipping other gods and even sacrificing his son to Molech (2 Kings 16:1-4). The only good thing Ahaz seemed to do was father Hezekiah, who became a good king of Judah.
God protected Jerusalem, and this dual enemy could not force Judah into a treaty. This verse summarizes the attack, and the following verses give more details about it.
The year was 734 B.C. Ahaz, king of Judah in Jerusalem, was about to be attacked by an alliance of the northern kingdom of Israel and Aram. He was frightened by the prospect of the possible end of his reign and by the invading armies that killed many people or took them as captives (2 Chronicles 28:5-21). But, as Isaiah predicted, the kingdom of Judah did not come to an end at this time.

3. Isaiah – Chapter 7:2-3
2And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. 3Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field; 
Ephraim and Israel frequently used as collective nouns for the entire Northern Kingdom.
You and Shear-Jashub your son: Isaiah was told to take his son, named Shear-Jashub, and bring a word from the Lord to Ahaz. He brought his son as a walking object lesson, because the name Shear-Jashub means, A Remnant Shall Return. A son of Isaiah whose name was designed to confirm a prophecy (Isa. 10:21).

4. Isaiah – Chapter 7:4-5
4And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. 5Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
1. Take heed. 2. Be quiet. 3. Fear not. 4. Neither be fainthearted.
[smoking firebrands] In this figure of speech the kings of Syria and Ephraim are pictured as harmless. They were not burning tails to set everything else on fire, but only smoking tails.
Why was it so hard for Ahaz to do this? Because he didn’t see the situation the way the Lord did. Ahaz looked at Israel and Syria and saw a terrible threat. God looked at Israel and Syria and saw two stubs of smoking firebrands. To the Lord, they were all smoke and no fire!.

5. Isaiah – Chapter 7:6-7
6Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal: 7Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.
It did not happen, Ahaz was not overthrown by Syria or Israel. Nevertheless, his kingdom was severely damaged because Ahaz did not put his trust in nor seek the protection of God. He actually made things worse by his invitation of the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pilezer, to come and help him.
Ahaz sought political answers, not just without asking for, but by rejecting the help of God. His refusal to ask God for a sign is not humility but hypocrisy. He was simply an unbeliever.

6. Isaiah – Chapter 7:6-7
6Remaliah = Tabeal, via encryption.
Students of encrypted writing have discovered that there are examples of “secret” writing in the Old Testament. One of the oldest forms of encryption is a simple sliding alphabet used for direct substitutions. An example from Hebrew is known as “ALBAM” in which the alphabet (which itself is a Hebrew word coming from “aleph-bet”) is simply written over itself as shown in figure 1 (below). This is then used to substitute each letter in a message with the letter over (or under) it.

7. Isaiah – Chapter 7:8
8For 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. 
Ahaz, one of Judah's worst kings, refused God's help, and instead, he tried to buy aid from the Assyrians with silver and gold from the Temple (2 Kings 16:8). When the Assyrians came, they brought further trouble instead of help. In 722 B.C., Samaria, the capital of Israel, the northern kingdom, fell to the Assyrian armies, thus ending the northern kingdom.
The tenor of the message is to let Ahaz know that he need not fear the alliance of his two enemies in the north. God has determined that their venture will be a failure. The problem is, how will Ahaz know it? To begin with, he is a skeptic, a doubter, and an unbeliever. How will he be convinced that what Isaiah is saying is true?
If a person really wants to know God and will give up his sin and turn to Christ, God will make Himself real to him. In our day the problem is that a great many folk do not really mean business with God.

8. Isaiah – Chapter 7:9
9And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.
As it happened, Ahaz did not believe. He did not put his trust in the Lord. He put his trust in carnal methods and the king of Assyria. Jerusalem was spared, and Ahaz no doubt believed he was successful, and his plan worked. But if he would have just trusted in the Lord, Jerusalem would have been spared, and Ahaz would have been blessed.
That is an interesting phrase in Hebrew. "Believe" and "last" are the same word, "aw-MAN." The closest way to translate this into English would be, "If you will not support this, then you will not be supported."

9. Isaiah – Chapter 7:10-13
10Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 11Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. 12But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD. 13And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?
As a means of strengthening his faith Ahaz was told to ask the Lord... for a sign, an attesting miracle that would confirm God's word. The king could choose any miraculous work he wished, from the deepest depths to the highest heights. This was a figure of speech, a merism, that mentioned two extremes with the intention of including all the areas in between them. With a miracle performed simply for the asking, Ahaz would have visible confirmation that Isaiah's words (vv. 7-9) were truly from the Lord. Ahaz could count on the fact that the northern alliance would not defeat Judah.
But Ahaz refused to request a sign, saying he would not... test God (cf. Deut. 6:16). This answer sounded pious but probably in the way he said it showed he was not believing Isaiah. Perhaps he did not want to believe Isaiah, who had been prophesying about the eventual destruction of Judah if her people did not return to the Lord.
Ahaz refused to ask for a sign. He did not want God to confirm that He would protect Judah because he had already decided not to trust God but to make other arrangements. He tried to justify his disobedience and his lack of faith with a pious statement that he did not want to test Yahweh (cf. Deut. 6:16).
Ahaz, by rejecting the offer of a sign from God's messenger, was in effect rejecting the One who sent the prophet. The house of David (cf. v. 2) refers not to all David's descendants, but to Ahaz and those kings of Judah who would descend from him.

10. Isaiah – Chapter 7:14-16
14Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 15Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 16For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
The Hebrew word in the text that is translated virgin is "almah." It has a definite article in Hebrew as can be seen in the last word in the first line in the Hebrew text above. It is "ha'almah" or literally "the virgin."
One of the most telling arguments he uses is that the Septuagint translators not only translated the verse here but they told what it meant, to them, before the advent of Jesus. It is obvious from their translation that they believed that one who would be called "God with us" required a virgin birth.
Butter and honey were common food for children. The infant was first nourished with honey, and then with milk.
Eating curds (thick, sour milk) and honey, the diet of the poor, in contrast to bread and wine, pictures a time of poverty in the land.
The promise that both of the kings would be gone before and extend to the virgin birth, is incredibly historically correct.

11. Isaiah – Chapter 7:14-16 1. “The Lord Himself”: a sign divinely given.
2. You (plural) = to the House of David.
3. Miraculous sign: v.11.
4. Concerned with the continuation of the
House of David.
5. The virgin. Definite article.
Ha Almah: damsel, maid, virgin: untouched.
LXX: parthenos = virgin.
6. “Immanuel” = “God with us”
7. Truly human, as other children.

12. Isaiah – Chapter 7:17-18
17The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. 18And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
Instead of being told to fear the trouble that was to come from Syria and Ephraim, Ahaz was warned of Assyria whom he was trusting in for deliverance.
Flies and bees are symbols of God's judgment (see Exodus 23:28).
Yahweh would summon the armies of Assyria and Egypt to do His bidding as one whistles (or hisses) at insects (cf. 5:26). The ancients could evidently control flies and bees by hissing at them.

13. Isaiah – Chapter 7:19-20
19And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes. 20In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard. 
In the same day -- when Judah would be invaded and the land destroyed by the armies of Assyria and Egypt, the destruction would be as clean as a man shaving with a razor.
If Ahaz understood and believed what the Lord said, it would have terrified him. The Assyrians were well known for their sheer cruelty, especially over the nations they conquered.
They delighted in the torture and humiliation (shave with a hired razor the head and the hair of the legs).
To shave off the beard of an Oriental was an unbearable shame to him and was a sign of great sadness and mourning as well as despicable slavery.

14. Isaiah – Chapter 7:21-22
21And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep; 22And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land. 
In that day of woe, instead of having flocks and herds, the Judahites would be fortunate to have only one heifer and a couple of sheep. There would be such a lack of abundance of milk that they would have to curdle it to preserve it. They would also have to resort to eating honey instead of the variety of food items that they previously enjoyed. Even though food and drink would be scarce, it would be good food and drink because God would provide for the people who
survived the Assyrian invasion.

15. Isaiah – Chapter 7:23-24
23And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns. 24With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.
The condition of the beautiful land is described after the visit of Tiglath Pilezer who left little of any population to till the ground or tend cattle. Even the attempt to repopulate the land with foreigners according to Assyrian policy would create little progress in restoration while the best land would be used only for grazing, while grazing land would grow up in briers and thorns, literally.

16. Isaiah – Chapter 7:25
25And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.
[mattock] This tool was used in mountainous places where a plow could not be easily handled for turning the soil.

17. Isaiah – Chapter 7
End of Chapter 7