It might help to know that Ahaz was not a good king, in terms of being devout in following God. He was evil and self-serving. Yet God tried to protect him because he was in the line of David and part of the kingly promise. Isaiah tells him God is okay with him asking for a sign to be sure it is really God who is speaking to him. Ahaz puts on a bit of a show of piety here when he says, “I will not test the Lord like that.” He knows that it is sinful to test the Lord. But he is being given “permission” to do so here and still refuses. Ahaz has obviously made up his mind he can do it on his own, or at least with the help of Assyria.
Then Isaiah says this. “All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).” This is recognizable to us as Christians. We find it also in Matthew 1:23. From the sources I reviewed, however, it is unlikely that Isaiah’s reference was strictly a pronouncement of the coming Messiah. Double prophecies happen, and I think that is what we have here. For purposes of the illustration given to Ahaz, it was a sign he could see with his own eyes rather than wait generations for fulfillment.
Continue reading “Isaiah 7:10-25 – The Sign of Immanuel”
