Isaiah

7 ¹And 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 Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to war against Jerusalem, but he was not able to conquer it. ²When it was reported to the house of David, saying,

Unnamed individual

“Aram is in league with Ephraim,”

Isaiah

then the hearts of Ahaz and his people shook, just like the trees of the forest shake before the wind. ³Then the LORD said to Isaiah,

The Lord

“Go forth now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub[1], at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool on the road to the Launderer’s Field,

⁴and say to him, ‘Be careful, and be quiet;
do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint,

because of these two smoldering sticks of firewood,
because of the raging of Rezin and Aram, and of the son of Remaliah.

⁵Because Aram, Ephraim,
and the son of Remaliah have plotted evil against you,’ saying,

The Two Kings

⁶‘Let us go up against Judah, and terrify it, and divide it among ourselves, and let us install the son of Tabeal as king over it.’”

Isaiah

⁷Thus says my Lord, the LORD,

The Lord

“It will not happen;
it will not come to pass.

⁸For the head of Aram is Damascus,
and the head of Damascus is Rezin;

and within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered,
that it is no longer a people.

⁹And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,
and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son.

If you do not trust,
surely you will not hold firm.”

Isaiah

¹⁰Again the LORD spoke unto Ahaz, saying,

The Lord

¹¹“Ask a sign of the LORD your God;

let it be in the depths of Sheol
or the heights above.”

Isaiah

¹²But Ahaz said,

Ahaz

“I will not ask,
neither will I test the LORD.”

Isaiah

¹³And {Isaiah} said, “Hear now, O house of David;

is it a small thing for you to try the patience of men,
but will you try the patience of my God also?

¹⁴Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign—

behold, the virgin[2] will conceive
and will bear a son and call His name Immanuel.[3]

¹⁵He will eat butter[4] and honey, until he knows to refuse the evil, and to choose the good.
¹⁶For before the child knows to refuse the evil and choose the good,

the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”

Isaiah (to Ahaz)

¹⁷The LORD will bring upon you
and upon your people
and upon your father’s house

days that have not come,
from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria!

Isaiah

¹⁸And it will come to pass in that day

that the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the end of Egypt[5]
and for the bees that are in the land of Assyria.

¹⁹And they will come, and all of them rest in the steep ravines,
and in the crevices of the rocks,

and upon all thorn bushes,
and at all the watering places.

²⁰In that day the LORD will use the king of Assyria, hired beyond the river, to shave with a razor:

the head and the hair of the private parts,[6]
and he will also snatch away the beard.

²¹And it will come to pass in that day that a man will keep alive a heifer of the herd and two sheep;
²²and it will come to pass because they will give an abundance of milk,

he will eat butter;
and everyone who is left in the land will eat butter and honey.

²³And it will come to pass in that day, every place that used to have a thousand vines worth a thousand pieces of silver will be thorns and briars.

²⁴Men will come there with arrows and bows,
because all the land will become briars and thorns.

²⁵And all mountains that were once cultivated with the hoe,
one will no longer come there out of fear for briars and thorns,

but they will become places where cattle are turned loose
and where sheep tread.