Isaiah 8:12

Say ye not, a confederacy,.... With the king of Assyria, or any other; do not cry it up as a right thing, and express pleasure and satisfaction in it, and encourage others to come into it, and vote

Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. The words of Yahweh. Verse 12. Say ye not, A confederacy - rather.

Say ye not, thou, Isaiah, and thine and my children, A confederacy; do not approve of or consent to this wicked design of making a confederacy with the king of Assyria. Their fear; that thing which they fear, that if they do not call in the Assyrian succours, they shall certainly be destroyed by those two potent kings united against them, and that God either cannot or will not deliver them.

Isaiah 8:12 Say ye not, A confederacy, to all [them to] whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.Ver. 12. Say ye not a confederacy.] A confederacy, a confederacy - scil., between Syria and Samaria - is made against us; this was vox populi, voice of the people, all the talk in those days, and everybody’ s mouth was full of it, and heart afraid of it. But say ye not so, comply not, consent not; chime not in with the spirits and speeches of other men. Away with all such despairing language. For help against which,

(12) Say ye not, A confederacy . . .—The words have been very differently interpreted. (1) The confederacy has been thought to be that between Syria or Ephraim, which had at first filled the people with terror, and then had seemed so powerful that men had been willing to join it (Isaiah 7:2; Isaiah 8:6). (2) Translating the word as conspiracy as in 2 Kings 17:4—it was the word used by Athaliah when she cried, “Treason, treason!” (2 Chronicles 23:13)—interpreters have seen in it the cry of the Assyrian alliance party against the prophet and his followers, whom they accused of conspiracy against their country, such as was afterwards imputed to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 37:14). (3) Others, following a conjectural amendment of the text, have read, “Ye shall not call everything a holy thing which this people calleth a holy thing,” and find in the words a protest against the idolatrous reverence for that which has no real holiness, analogous to the warning against soothsayers or diviners in Isaiah 8:19; or possibly an allusion to such an object of worship as the brazen serpent, which Hezekiah had destroyed by Isaiah’s advice (2 Kings 18:4). Of these, (2) seems the most in harmony with the sequence of facts and thoughts.

Verse 12. Say ye not, A confederacy - "Say ye not, It is holy"] קשר kesher. Both the reading and the sense of this word are doubtful. The Septuagint manifestly read קשה kashah; for they render it by σκληρον, hard. The Syriac and Chaldee render it מרדא merda, and מרוד merod, rebellion. How they came by this sense of the word, or what they read in their copies, is not so clear. But the worst of it is, that neither of these readings or renderings gives any clear sense in this place. For why should God forbid his faithful servants to say with the unbelieving Jews, It is hard; or, There is a rebellion; or, as our translators render it, a confederacy? And how can this be called "walking in the way of this people?" Isaiah 8:11, which usually means, following their example, joining with them in religious worship. Or what confederacy do they mean? The union of the kingdoms of Syria and Israel against Judah? That was properly a league between two independent states, not an unlawful conspiracy of one part against another in the same state; this is the meaning of the word קשר kesher. For want of any satisfactory interpretation of this place that I can meet with, I adopt a conjecture of Archbishop Secker, which he proposes with great diffidence, and even seems immediately to give up, as being destitute of any authority to support it. I will give it in his own words: - "Videri potest ex cap. v. 16, et hujus cap. 13, 14, 19, legendum קרש vel קדוש kadosh, eadem sententia, qua אלהינו Eloheynu, Hosea 14:3. Sed nihil necesse est. Vide enim Jeremiah 11:9; Ezekiel 22:25. Optime tamen sic responderent huic versiculo versiculi 13, 14." The passages of Jeremiah and Ezekiel above referred to seem to me not at all to clear up the sense of the word קשר kesher in this place. But the context greatly favours the conjecture here given, and makes it highly probable: "Walk not in the way of this people; call not their idols holy, nor fear ye the object of their fear:" (that is, the σεβασματα, or gods of the idolaters; for so fear here signifies, to wit, the thing feared. So God is called "The fear of Isaac," Genesis 31:42; Genesis 31:53:) "but look up to JEHOVAH as your Holy One; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread; and he shall be a holy Refuge unto you." Here there is a harmony and consistency running through the whole sentence; and the latter part naturally arises out of the former, and answers to it. Idolatry, however, is full of fears. The superstitious fears of the Hindoos are very numerous. They fear death, bad spirits generally, and hobgoblins of all descriptions. They fear also the cries of jackalls, owls, crows, cats, asses, vultures, dogs, lizards, c. They also dread different sights in the air, and are alarmed at various dreams. See WARD'S Customs.

12. A confederacy] Strictly: A conspiracy (R.V.). But the word “conspiracy” does not necessarily imply (as some have thought) treason within the state. It may be used (as the verb is in Nehemiah 4:2) of an external coalition threatening the integrity of the commonwealth. On the whole this seems to give the best sense here. The “conspiracy” is the Syro-Ephraimitish alliance, which Isaiah and his adherents are warned not to treat as a serious danger. Another explanation is that Isaiah and his party were suspected of treasonable complicity in the designs of the allies (cf. Jeremiah 37:13); but did they need a supernatural revelation to tell them that that charge was false? The word has also been supposed to allude to the spirit of preternatural suspicion that was abroad, causing every man to suspect his neighbour of being a traitor. But Isaiah is little likely to have been disturbed by this. neither fear ye their fear] i.e. “fear not what they fear,” but fear Jehovah alone (Isaiah 8:13).

Say ye not - Do not join in their purposes of forming a confederacy.

12. Say ye not — Rather, Ye shall not say, a prohibition. A confederacy — ëùׁ ?ø, (kesher,) “conspiracy.” In other places, (2 Samuel 15:12; 1 Kings 16:10; 2 Kings 11:14, etc.,) this word means treason.