Isaiah 7:8

For the head of Syria [is] Damascus,.... Damascus was the metropolis of Syria, the chief city in it, where the king had his palace, and kept his court; of which [See comments on Genesis 15:2] [See

For 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.

Is Damascus; or rather, shall be Damascus; for the verb is not expressed in the Hebrew text, and therefore may be either way supplied. The sense is, Damascus shall still continue to be the capital and chief city of the kingdom of Syria; and therefore Jerusalem shall not be taken, nor become a part of Rezin’ s dominion; but he shall be kept within his own bounds, and be king of Damascus only, and not, as he hopes, of Jerusalem. Within threescore and five years; to be computed either, 1. From the prophecy of Amos, who prophesied in the days of Uzziah, two years before the earthquake, , which the Jews affirm to have happened about the time of his usurpation of the priest’ s office, and being smitten with leprosy, , &c., which though it be not proved, yet it may be admitted, because it cannot be disproved. And it is more than probable that that action and accident was divers years before his death, during which time Jotham acted as his viceroy, . And the prophecy of Amos being express and full concerning the destruction of the people and commonwealth of Israel, being also fresh in the memory of many now living, the prophet Isaiah might well have respect to it. So the sense is as if he had said, There shall be but sixty-five years between the delivery and the execution of that prophecy. And so the number of years may be thus made up. Fix the beginning of them ten years before Uzziah’ s death, add the sixteen years of Jotham’ s reign, and then the sixteen years of Ahaz’ s reign, and then six of Hezekiah’ s reign, in which Israel was carried captive, , these make up forty-eight years; and for the seventeen years which yet remain of the sixty-five, they may be taken out of the rest of Hezekiah’ s reign. For although the transportation of that people began in the sixth year of Hezekiah, yet it might be continued or repeated divers years after, and completed seventeen years after, . Or rather, 2. These years may be computed from the time of this prophecy of Isaiah. And whereas it may objected against this opinion, that the judgment here threatened was executed in the sixth year of Hezekiah, as was before noted, and therefore within eighteen or nineteen years of this prophecy, which was delivered in the third or fourth year of Ahaz; two things may be answered, 1.

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, that it be not a people.Ver. 8. For the head of Syria is Damascus.] Not Jerusalem, as they haply had contrived it; looking upon Jerusalem as a city fatally founded to bear rule, as one saith of Constantinople. And the head of Damascus is Rezin.] Let him set his heart at rest, and not reach after the dominion of Judah; lest, falling from his high hopes, he lose that he hath already, and cry out with that ambitionist, Sic mea fata sequor. And within threescore and five years,] sc., From the time that Amos foretold it, that is, from the twenty-fourth year of Uzziah to the sixth of Hezekiah, whenas the ten tribes were carried away by Shalmaneser. Thus Jerome out of Seder Olam. But I like better Piscator’ s computation, which is thus within sixty-five years, that is, from the fourth year of Ahaz, now current, to the twenty-third of Manasseh, when Ephraim ceased indeed to be a people by the command of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib; whereof see Ezra 4:2.

(8) The head of Syria is Damascus . . .—The prediction of the failure of the alliance is emphasised. Each city, Damascus and Samaria, should continue to be what it was, the head of a comparatively weak kingdom, and should not be aggrandised 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 that which now follows, and 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 B.C. 736 as the probable date of the prophecy, the sixty-five years bring us to B.C. 671. 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 Salmaneser and Sargon (2 Kings 17:6). Ephraim then was no more a people.

Verse 8. - 9. For the head of Syria, c.] "Though the head of Syria be Damascus, And the head of Damascus Retsin Yet within threescore and five years Ephraim shall be broken, that he be no more a people: And the head of Ephraim be Samaria; And the head of Samaria Remaliah's son. "Here are six lines, or three distichs, the order of which seems to have been disturbed by a transposition, occasioned by three of the lines beginning with the same word וראש verosh, "and the head," which three lines ought not to have been separated by any other line intervening; but a copyist, having written the first of them, and casting his eye on the third, might easily proceed to write after the first line beginning with וראש verosh, that which ought to have followed the third line beginning with וראש verosh. Then finding his mistake, to preserve the beauty of his copy, added at the end the distich which should have been in the middle; making that the second distich, which ought to have been the third. For the order as it now stands is preposterous: the destruction of Ephraim is denounced, and then their grandeur is set forth; whereas naturally the representation of the grandeur of Ephraim should precede that of their destruction. And the destruction of Ephraim has no coherence with the grandeur of Syria, simply as such, which it now follows: but it naturally and properly follows the grandeur of Ephraim, joined to that of Syria their ally. "The arrangement then of the whole sentence seems originally to have been thus: - Though the head of Syria be Damascus, And the head of Samaria Remaliah's son: Ephraim shall be broken that he be no more a people." DR. JUBB. Threescore and five years] It was sixty-five years from the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, when this prophecy was delivered, to the total depopulation of the kingdom of Israel by Esarhaddon, who carried away the remains of the ten tribes which had been left by Tiglath-pileser, and Shalmaneser, and who planted the country with new inhabitants. That the country was not wholly stripped of its inhabitants by Shalmaneser appears from many passages of the history of Josiah, where Israelites are mentioned as still remaining there, 2 Chronicles 34:6-7; 2 Chronicles 34:33; 2 Chronicles 35:18; 2Kg 23:19-20. This seems to be the best explanation of the chronological difficulty in this place, which has much embarrassed the commentators: see Usserii Annal. V. T. ad an. 3327, and Sir I. Newton, Chronol. p. 283. "That the last deportation of Israel by Esarhaddon was in the sixty-fifth year after the second of Ahaz, is probable for the following reasons: The Jews, in Seder Olam Rabba, and the Talmudists, in D. Kimchi on Ezek. iv., say that Manasseh king of Judah was carried to Babylon by the king of Assyria's captains, 2 Chronicles 33:11, in the twenty-second year of his reign; that is, before Christ 676, according to Dr. Blair's tables. And they are probably right in this.

8, 9. A confirmation of Isa 7:7; but the thought is difficult to grasp. The general meaning seems to be that the league is an attempt to obliterate the political distinctions which Jehovah has established between the neighbouring states. (Observe that in Isaiah 7:16 the prophet seems to speak as if Syria and Israel had become one kingdom in virtue of their alliance.) Syria and Ephraim are separate nationalities, each with its own capital and king; Judah belongs to neither of them and is not to be amalgamated with them. In short: “Damascus is the head of Syria and of nothing else, &c.” We may even suppose (with Ewald) that Isaiah intended to add, “but the head of Judah is Jerusalem and the head of Jerusalem is Jehovah of Hosts.”

For the head of Syria - The “capital.” The “head” is often used in this sense. Is Damascus - For an account of this city, see the notes at Isaiah 17:1; compare the notes at Acts 9:2.

8, 9. In these verses there is at first sight a degree of complexity which has induced some able commentators to propose amendments of the text. But a closer investigation reveals the real parallelisms.