Isaiah 7:3 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 7:3
Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field;
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָה֮Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Isaiah
יְשַׁעְיָהוּ֒ye.sha'.ya.Hu
H3470
Jeshajah · proper noun, a man's name
forth
צֵאtze'-
H3318
to go (causatively · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine singular
meet
קִרְאָהqirʼâh
H7125
an encountering
Ahaz
אָחָ֔ז'a.Chaz
H271
Achaz · proper noun, a man's name
Shear-jashub
וּשְׁאָ֖רu.she.'Ar
H7610
Shear-Jashub · conjunction + proper noun, a man's name
son
בְּנֶ֑ךָbe.Ne.kha
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
end
קְצֵ֗הke.Tzeh
H7097
an extremity · noun, common masculine singular construct
conduit
תְּעָלַת֙te.'a.Lat
H8585
a channel (into which water is raised for irrigation) · noun, common feminine singular construct
upper
הָעֶלְיוֹנָ֔הha.'el.yo.Nah
H5945
an elevation · definite article + adjective, feminine singular absolute
pool
הַבְּרֵכָ֣הha.be.re.Khah
H1295
a reservoir (at which camels kneel as a resting-place) · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
highway
מְסִלַּ֖תme.si.Lat
H4546
a thoroughfare (as turnpiked) · noun, common feminine singular construct
fuller’s
כוֹבֵֽסkho.Ves
H3526
to trample · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
field
שְׂדֵ֥הse.Deh
H7704
a field (as flat) · noun, common masculine singular construct
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
2 Kings 18:17 And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they…
Isaiah 36:2 And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the up…
Romans 9:27 Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:
Isaiah 6:13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when the…
Exodus 7:15 Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river’s brink against he come; and the ro…
2 Kings 20:20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they no…
Isaiah 10:21 The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.
Isaiah 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 7:1-9
The prophet Isaiah had his commission renewed in the year that king Uzziah died, Isa 6:1. Jotham his son reigned, and reigned well, sixteen years. All that time, no doubt, Isaiah prophesied as he was commanded, and yet we have not in this book any of his prophecies dated in the reign of Jotham; but this, which is put first, was in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham. Many excellent useful sermons he preached which were not published and left upon record; for, if all that was memorable had been written, the world could not have contained the books, Joh 21:25. Perhaps in the reign of Ahaz, a wicked king, he had not opportunity to preach so much at court as in Jotham's time, and therefore then h…
Go forth--out of the city, to the place where Ahaz was superintending the works for defense and the cutting off of the water supply from the enemy, and securing it to the city. So Isa 22:9; Ch2 32:4.
Shearjashub--that is, A remnant shall return (Isa 6:13). His very name Isa 7:14; Isa 8:3 was a standing memorial to Ahaz and the Jews that the nation should not, notwithstanding the general calamity (Isa 7:17-25; Isa 8:6-8), be utterly destroyed (Isa 10:21-22).
conduit--an aqueduct from the pool or reservoir for the supply of the city. At the foot of Zion was Fount Siloah (Isa 8:6; Neh 3:15; Joh 9:7), called also Gihon, on the west of Jerusalem (Ch2 32:30). Two pools were supplied from it, t…
Then said the Lord unto Isaiah,.... The prophet, the inspired penman of these prophecies, that go by his name; what follows, the Lord said unto him in vision, or by an articulate voice, or by an impulse on his mind:
go forth now to meet Ahaz; the prophet was in the city of Jerusalem, and Ahaz was without, as appears by the place after mentioned, where he was to meet him; perhaps Ahaz was at his country house, which, upon the news brought him of the designs of his enemies, he leaves, and betakes himself to Jerusalem, his metropolis, and fortified city, where he might be more safe; or he had been out to reconnoitre the passes about Jerusalem, and give orders and directions for the strengtheni…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 3, 4 and following) And the Lord said to Isaiah: Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-Jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller's Field. And say to him: Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have plotted evil against you, saying: Let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over it, the son of Tabeel. Thus says the Lord God, this will not stand, and this will not be, but the head of Syria is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin, and yet sixty-five years, and Ephraim will cease to be a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Romelia. If you do not believe, you will not endure. Jasub, the son of Isaiah, who is interpreted as the remnant and turning back, in the likeness of the people of Judah, who was to be saved from the hands of the two kings, is commanded to go out with his parent and meet Ahaz, the king of Judah, by the upper pool of the aqueduct, on the road of the fuller's field, where later we will read, in the time of King Hezekiah, Rabshakeh stood to blaspheme the people of God by order of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. The place they went out to was the one where the leaders of the city, sent by Hezekiah, were mentioned in the book of Kings. And it is commanded to Ahaz (2 Kings 18), even though he is a wicked king, by the mercy of the Lord, to be silent and not be terrified or afraid in his heart, thinking that he will suffer similar things that he had suffered before. However, he calls the two tails of burning wood, that is, the smoke towers, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Samaria, because the kingdom of Syria, that is, Damascus, and the kingdom of Samaria, that is, the ten tribes, which were called Ephraim by another name, end in them. For it is written (2 Kings 16) that Theglathphalassar, king of the Assyrians, ascended to Damascus under King Ahaz and laid it waste, and carried away its inhabitants to Cyrene, and killed Rasin, and that he plotted against Pekah son of Remaliah, and killed him, and reigned in Israel for nine years in his place, and that…
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…
Conduit — A water-course or channel (Job 38:25). The “conduit of the upper pool” (Isa. 7:3) was formed by Hezekiah for the purpose of conveying the waters from the upper pool in the valley of Gihon to the west…
Fish-pools — (Cant. 7:4) should be simply “pools,” as in the Revised Version. The reservoirs near Heshbon (q.v.) were probably stocked with fish (2 Sam. 2:13; 4:12; Isa. 7:3; 22:9, 11).
Fuller’s field — A spot near Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:17; Isa. 36:2; 7:3), on the side of the highway west of the city, not far distant from the “upper pool” at the head of the valley of Hinnom. Here the fullers pursued…
Fullers Field, The — a spot near Jerusalem, (2 Kings 8:17; Isaiah 7:3; 36:2) so close to the walls that a person speaking from there could be heard on them. (2 Kings 18:17,26) One resort of the fullers of Jerusalem would…
Gihon — A stream. (1.) One of the four rivers of Eden (Gen. 2:13). It has been identified with the Nile. Others regard it as the Oxus, or the Araxes, or the Ganges. But as, according to the sacred narrative,…
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…
Remaliah — Adorned by the Lord, the father of Pekah, who conspired successfully against Pekahiah (2 Kings 15:25, 27, 30, 32, 37; Isa. 7:1, 4, 5, 9; 8:6).
Rezin — Firm; a prince, a king of Syria, who joined Pekah (q.v.) in an invasion of the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 15:37; 16:5-9; Isa. 7:1-8). Ahaz induced Tiglath-pileser III. to attack Damascus, and this…
Shear-Jashub — A remnant shall escape or return (i.e., to God), a symbolical name which the prophet Isaiah gave to his son (Isa. 7:3), perhaps his eldest son.
Then said the LORD. First, we see how God, remembering his covenant, anticipates this wicked king by sending the Prophet to meet him; for he does not wait for his prayers, but of his own accord promises that he will grant deliverance. His son Shear-jashub is joined with the Prophet as a witness of the prediction, and there is reason to believe that his name, Shear-jashub, was not given at random, but by the secret inspiration of the Spirit, or by an immediate command of God, and in order to point out the future deliverance of the people. He, therefore, carried in his name what might be regarded as an engraven seal, both of the approaching captivity and of the return. It is also probable that…
In this season of terror Isaiah received the following divine instructions. "Then said Jehovah to Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shear-jashub thy son, to the end of the aqueduct of the upper pool, to the road of the fuller's field." The fuller's field (sedēh cōbēs) was situated, as we may assume with Robinson, Schultz, and Thenius, against Williams, Krafft, etc., on the western side of the city, where there is still an "upper pool" of great antiquity (Ch2 32:30). Near to this pool the fullers, i.e., the cleaners and thickeners of woollen fabrics, carried on their occupation (Cōbēs, from Câbas, related to Câbash, subigere, which bears the same relation to râchatz as πλύν…
In this long section of the book, the nation of Israel was confronted with a vision of God, similar to how Isaiah was confronted in ch 6.
7:3 The aqueduct was a place where political negotiations took place later during Hezekiah’s reign (see 36:2).
Rashi on Isaiah 7:3
and Shear yashuv your son The small remnant that will return to Me through you, and they are like your sons.
to the edge of the conduit There you will find him. תְּעָלַת is fosed [a ditch] in O.F.
the upper pool A type of gathering of water that is made for fish.
upper On the incline of the mountain, and there is one below it at its base.
the washer’s field A field in which the washers spread out laundry to dry. So did Jonathan render this. Our Rabbis expounded that Ahaz humbled himself before Isaiah and placed on his head a washer’s utensil, i.e., he inverted a vessel on his head [i.e., a perforated vessel used by the washers, with which they sprinkle water on the clothing].
Shearjashub — (lit. a remnant shall return), the symbolical name of the son of Isaiah the prophet. (Isaiah 7:3)
Ephraim, Tribe Of · The leading tribe of the kingdom of Israel — The leading tribe of the kingdom of Israel
Fuller’s Field · A spot near — A spot near
Gihon · the city of — the city of
Hezekiah · .Conducts the Gihon Brook into — .Conducts the Gihon Brook into
Isaiah · kings of — kings of
Pekah · Prophecies against — Prophecies against
Pools And Ponds · Mentioned in scripture: The upper pool — Mentioned in scripture: The upper pool
Rezin · .Prophecy against — .Prophecy against
Shear-Jashub · A — A
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).
