Isaiah 7:17 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 7:17
The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
people
עַמְּךָ֮'a.me.Kha
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
father’s
אָבִיךָ֒'a.vi.Kha
H1
father · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
house
בֵּ֣יתbeit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct
days
יָמִים֙ya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
come
בָ֔אוּVa.'u
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
day
לְמִיּ֥וֹםle.mi.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · preposition + preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Ephraim
אֶפְרַ֖יִם'ef.Ra.yim
H669
Ephrajim · proper noun, a man's name
departed
סוּרsur-
H5493
to turn off (literal or figurative) · verb, qal infinitive construct
Judah
יְהוּדָ֑הye.hu.Dah
H3063
Jehudah (or Judah) · proper noun, a place name
king
מֶ֥לֶךְMe.lekh
H4428
a king · noun, common masculine singular construct
Assyria
אַשּֽׁוּר'a.Shur
H804
Ashshur · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 8:7-8 Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory:…
Isaiah 10:5-6 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.
1 Kings 12:16-19 So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither h…
2 Kings 18:1-19 Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.
2 Chronicles 10:16-19 And when all Israel saw that the king would not hearken unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? and…
2 Chronicles 28:19-21 For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the LORD.
2 Chronicles 32:1-33 After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced…
2 Chronicles 33:11 Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him wi…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 7:17–end
After the comfortable promises made to Ahaz as a branch of the house of David, here follow terrible threatenings against him, as a degenerate branch of that house; for though the loving-kindness of God shall not be utterly taken away, for the sake of David and the covenant made with him, yet his iniquity shall be chastened with the rod, and his sin with stripes. Let those that will not mix faith with the promises of God expect to hear the alarms of his threatenings.
I. The judgment threatened is very great, Isa 7:17. It is very great, for it is general; it shall be brought upon the prince himself (high as he is, he shall not be out of the reach of it), and upon the people, the whole body of…
For--The deliverance implied in the name "Immanuel," and the cessation of distress as to food (Isa 7:14-15), shall last only till the child grows to know good and evil;
for . . . the land that . . . abhorrest . . . forsaken of . . . kings--rather, desolate shall be the land, before whose two kings thou art alarmed [HENGSTENBERG and GESENIUS].
the land--namely, Syria and Samaria regarded as one (Kg2 16:9; Kg2 15:30), just two years after this prophecy, as it foretells. HORSLEY takes it, "The land (Judah and Samaria) of (the former of) which thou art the plague (literally, 'thorn') shall be forsaken," &c.; a prediction thus, that Judah and Israel (appropriately regarded as one "land") shou…
The Lord shall bring upon thee,.... These words are directed to Ahaz; and show, that though he and his kingdom would be safe from the two kings that conspired against him, yet evils should come upon him from another quarter, even from the Assyrians he sent to for help, and in whom he trusted; in which the Lord himself would have a hand, and permit them in his providence, in order to chastise him for his unbelief, stubbornness, and ingratitude in refusing the sign offered him, and for his other sins; and the calamities threatened began in his time; and therefore it is said, "upon thee"; for Tilgathpilneser, king of Assyria, to whom he sent for help, instead of helping and strengthening him, d…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 17.) The Lord will bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon your father's house, days that have not come since the days of the separation of Ephraim from Judah, with the king of Assyria. This place should be read with hyperbaton. Finally, we too, following the Hebrew truth, have interpreted it as follows: O house of David, listen to what I say, that the land of Syria and Samaria may be abandoned by the face of the two kings whom you fear most greatly. The Lord will bring days upon you, and upon the house of your father David, which you have never had since the time when the ten tribes were separated from the two tribes, and they began to have a kingdom in Samaria. These days, that is, times with the king of the Assyrians, will come upon them, so that once they are overcome and defeated, you may be liberated by the presence of Emmanuel. The Septuagint translates this passage as follows: 'The Lord will bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon the house of your father, days that have not yet come, from the day he took away Ephraim from Judah, the king of the Assyrians. We cannot know the exact meaning of this, unless perhaps it should be said that, by the magnitude of their sins, Ephraim, that is, Samaria, first caused the invasion of the Assyrians to turn away from them.' Another way: Meanwhile, now two kings, Rasin and Phacee, who besiege you, hasten to lay waste, will be overthrown in a short time: but the time of your devastation will come when, what you never hoped for, indeed never feared, the Assyrian has come. By which he teaches that the house of David, not Syria and Samaria, but the Assyrians are to be feared. Therefore, he frees from the present fear and threatens about the future time.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ahaz — Possessor. (1.) A grandson of Jonathan (1 Chr. 8:35; 9:42). (2.) The son and successor of Jotham, king of Judah (2 Kings 16; Isa. 7-9; 2 Chr. 28). He gave himself up to a life of wickedness and…
Assyria — The name derived from the city Asshur on the Tigris, the original capital of the country, was originally a colony from Babylonia, and was ruled by viceroys from that kingdom. It was a mountainous…
Pekah — Open-eyed, the son of Remaliah a captain in the army of Pekahiah, king of Israel, whom he slew, with the aid of a band of Gileadites, and succeeded (B.C. 758) on the throne (2 Kings 15:25). Seventeen…
Ephraim, Tribe Of · The leading tribe of the kingdom of Israel — The leading tribe of the kingdom of Israel
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Lord shall bring upon thee. Here the Prophet, on the other hand, threatens the wicked hypocrite, who pretended that he was unwilling to tempt God, and yet called for those whom the Lord had forbidden him to call to his aid. (Exodus 23:32.) That he might not indulge in undue exultation and insolence on account of the former promise, he likewise threatens his destruction, and declares that what he hopes to be his preservation, that is, the aid of the Assyrians, will be utterly destructive to him. (2 Kings 16:7; 2 Chronicles 28:16.) As if he had said, "Thou promisest everything to thyself from the king of Assyria, and thinkest that he will be faithful to thee, because thou hast entered into…
"For before the boy shall understand to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land will be desolate, of whose two kings thou art afraid. Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days such as have not come since the day when Ephraim broke away from Judah - the king of Asshur." The land of the two kings, Syria and Israel, was first of all laid waste by the Assyrians, whom Ahaz called to his assistance. Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus and a portion of the kingdom of Israel, and led a large part of the inhabitants of the two countries into captivity (Kg2 15:29; Kg2 16:9). Judah was then also laid waste by the Assyrians, as a punishment for having ref…
Israel broke away from Judah in 931 BC (see 1 Kgs 12:19-20). • will bring the king of Assyria upon you: Ahaz called Assyria in to help (2 Kgs 16:8-9), but Assyria turned against him and made Judah a vassal state.
Rashi on Isaiah 7:17
The Lord shall bring upon you and upon your people “And yet greater that this, the Lord shall bring upon you and upon your people [ms]. Upon Hezekiah your son, who will reign after you,” but since he was righteous, he did not call him his son.
days which have not come since the day the kingdom of the House of David was divided, and Ephraim seceded from Judah. And what are the days? The days of the army of the king of Assyria, and even then [lit. in them], a miracle shall be performed for Judah, and so we find in II Chron. (28:20) that he came first upon Ahaz, for it is written: “And Tilgath-Pilnesser [not as in printed editions] came upon him and distressed him, but did not strengthen him.”…
