Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 7:8

"For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken in pieces, so that is shall not be a people:" — Isaiah 7:8 (ASV)

The head of Syria is Damascus ... — The prediction of the failure of the alliance is emphasized. Each city, Damascus and Samaria, was to continue to be what it was—the head of a comparatively weak kingdom—and was not to be aggrandized by the conquest of Judah and Jerusalem. There is an implied comparison of the two hostile cities and their kings with Jerusalem and its supreme King, Jehovah. Bolder critics, like Ewald, assume that a clause expressing that contrast has been displaced by what now follows, which they reject as a later interpolation.

Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken. — Assuming the genuineness of the clause, we have in it the first direct chronological prediction in the prophet’s utterances. Others follow in Isaiah 16:14; Isaiah 17:1; Isaiah 21:6; Isaiah 23:1. Reckoning from 736 B.C. as the probable date of the prophecy, the sixty-five years bring us to 671 B.C. At that date, Assyrian inscriptions show that Assurbanipal, the “Asnapper” of Ezra 4:2-10, co-regent with his father Esarhaddon, had carried off the last remnant of the people of Samaria, and peopled it with an alien race (Smith’s Assurbanipal, p. 363). This completed the work which had been begun by Shalmaneser and Sargon (2 Kings 17:6). Ephraim then was no more a people.