John Gill Commentary


John Gill Commentary
"Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set up a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel;" — Isaiah 7:6 (ASV)
Let us go up against Judah, and vex it By besieging or distressing it; or "stir it up" to war, as Jarchi interprets it.
and let us make a breach therein for us In the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and enter in at it; the Targum is, ``let us join, and put it to us;'' and so Jarchi, let us level it with us, as this valley, which is even: the sense may be, let us make a breach and division among them, and then part the kingdom between usF3; or if we cannot agree on that, let us set up a king of our own, as follows:
and set a king in the midst of it, [even] the son of Tabeal Which Jarchi, by a situation of the alphabet the Jews call "albam", makes it to be the same with Remala, that is, Remaliah; and so supposes, that the intention was to set Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, over Judah; but it is not reasonable to think that the king of Syria should join in such a design; and besides, the method of interpretation, Aben Ezra says, is mere vanity; and whose sense of the words is much preferable, taking Tabeal to be the name of some great prince, either of Israel or of Syria; and so Kimchi thinks that he was a man of the children of Ephraim, whom they thought to make king in Jerusalem. The Targum understands not any particular person, but anyone that should be thought proper; and paraphrases it thus, ``let us appoint a king in the midst of it, who is right for us,'' or pleases us; the name seems to be Syriac, see (Ezra 4:7) (1 Kings 15:18) . Dr. Lightfoot thinks it is the same with Tabrimmon, the name of some famous family in Syria. One signifies "good God": and the other "good Rimmon", which was the name of the idol of the Syrians, (2 Kings 5:18) .