Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 7:1

"And 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 to Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it." — Isaiah 7:1 (ASV)

We may deal with it as though the Gospel of Saint Matthew had never been written, as though the facts which it records had no place in the history of mankind. From this point of view, we get what seems at first a comparatively simple exposition.

The prophet offers a sign to the faithless king, and the sign is this: he points to some young bride, in either sense of that word, and says that she will conceive and bear a son. The fulfilment of that prediction, in a matter which lay outside the range of human knowledge, was to be the sign for Ahaz and his court, and she would give that son a name which would rebuke the faithlessness of the king. Immanuel, “God with us,” would be a nomen et omen, witnessing not of an incarnate Deity, but of His living and abiding presence.

On this theory, we have no data for deciding who the mother of the child was. As the prophet's two other children bore mysterious and prophetic names, like Hosea’s (Isaiah 7:3; Isaiah 8:3), the most probable conjecture seems to be that it was Isaiah’s own wife—still young and, as it were, still a bride—or possibly a second wife whom he had married, or was about to marry, after the death of his first. Other guesses have pointed to one of the women of Ahaz's harem who may have been with him when Isaiah spoke. The hypothesis of some critics that such a woman became the mother of Hezekiah, and that he was the Immanuel of the prophet’s thoughts, breaks down under the test of dates.

Hezekiah, at the time the prophecy was uttered, was a boy of at least nine years of age (2 Kings 16:2; 2 Kings 18:2). Of this child so born, Isaiah predicts that he will grow up in a time of suffering and privation (Isaiah 7:15), and that before he attains manhood, the confederacy of Rezin and Remaliah will come to a disastrous end. So far, all is at least coherent. Immanuel, as a person, stands on the same level as Shear-jashub, representing a great idea to which Isaiah again appeals in Isaiah 8:8; Isaiah 8:10, but not identified with the Christ, or even with any expectations of the Christ. On the other hand, there are phenomena in Isaiah’s prophetic work at large which this explanation does not adequately include.

The land of Israel, at least, appears to be described as in some peculiar sense the land of Immanuel (Isaiah 8:10). Isaiah is clearly expecting—even in the first volume that bears his name (not to speak of Isaiah 40-66)—the arrival, at some undefined point in the future, of one whose nature, work, and character will be represented by the marvellous series of names in Isaiah 9:6, in whom the spirit of Jehovah and the fear of Jehovah will dwell in their fullness—who will be of the stem of Jesse, and whose reign will be as the realised ideal of a golden age (Isaiah 11:1–10).

That expectation connects itself with a similar prophecy in Micah 5:3-5, associated as this is with the childbirth of a woman in labor. In what relation, we ask, did Immanuel stand to these confessedly Messianic predictions?