mmunications, has already chosen his help, wishes
that every thing should go on in an easy human manner, and refuses the
Lord's offer in a polite turn which even refers to the Law. A sign is
then forced upon him, because as the king of Judah, he must see and
hear for all Judah that the Lord is faithful and good."[1] The Prophet,
in ver. 14, points to the birth of the Saviour by a Virgin. How then
was it possible that in the present collision that people should be
destroyed, among whom, according to former promises. He was to be born;
that that family should be extinguished from which he was to be
descended? The name "Immanuel," by which the future Saviour is
designated as "He in whom the Lord is, in the truest manner, to be with
His people," is a guarantee for His help in the present distress also.
The Prophet then states the time in which the land shall be entirely
delivered from its present enemies. The contemporaries, as the
representative of whom [Pg 30] the child appears (the Prophet, in the
energy of his faith, has transferred the birth of this child from the
future to the present), shall, after the short space of about two
years, again obtain the full enjoyment of the products of the land,
ver. 15. For, before this period has elapsed, destruction will fall
upon the hostile kings in their own land, ver. 16. The danger,
however--and this is pointed out in ver. 17-25--will come from just
that quarter from which Ahaz expects help, viz., from Asshur. But the
security for deliverance from this danger also--the conqueror of the
world's power which was soon to begin its course in Asshur, is none
other than Immanuel, whom the Prophet, in the beginning of the
humiliation of the people of God, makes, so to say, to become man, in
order that, during the impending deep humiliation of the people of God,
He may accompany it in its history during all the stages of its
existence, until He should really become man. He is, however in this
discourse, not yet pointed out as the deliverer from Asshur, and the
world's power represented by him. The darkness of the misery to be
inflicted by Asshur should not, and could not, in the meantime, be
cleared up for Ahaz; the picture must end in night. But in the
following discourse, chap. viii. 1, ix. 6 (7), which serves as a
necessary supplement to the one before us, the Saviour is depicted
before the eyes of those despairing in the sight of Asshur; and the
two-fold repetition of His name Immanu