Isaiah 7

After opening with the siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC, Chapter 6 resets the Book of Isaiah more than 40 years to 743 BC, when the prophet is called to ministry. It then picks up 15 years later in Chapter 7, as the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, ruled by King Ahaz, is invaded by the northern kingdom of Israel and neighboring Syria. 

Now the house of David was told, “Aram [Syria] has allied itself with Ephraim [Israel]”; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest as shaken by the wind.

- Isaiah 7:2 

Ahaz and his people had good reason to be afraid. Judah and Israel had split around 200 years earlier, following the death of King Solomon. They were neighbors and rivals but still countrymen. Israel was much bigger, with 10 of the 12 tribes heading north in the split, leaving only the tribes of Judah (which the country was named for) and Benjamin in the south. Judah was already at a disadvantage in terms of size so an alliance between Israel and Syria threatened to completely upset the balance of power.

It’s hard to come up with a good analogy for what was happening. Imagine if the Confederacy had won the Civil War and then existed on uneasy terms with the Union for the next 200 years until a joint invasion between the US and Canada in the 2060s.

Isaiah had spent the 15 years between Chapters 6 and 7 preaching and prophesying throughout Judah. He had become a prominent enough figure to where he could give Ahaz advice:

Then the Lord said to Isaiah ... “Say to [Ahaz], ‘Be careful, keep calm, and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood -- because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.’”

- Isaiah 7:3-4

Ahaz is terrified by metaphorical smoke coming from Israel and Syria. God tells him not to fear. Their kings are just stubs of firewood that won’t burn for much longer. Their fire is already out.

Photo: Fs999

But Ahaz cannot see through the smoke. All he sees is death and destruction headed his way so he desperately reaches out for any help he can find.

The next part of the story is told in a different book of the Old Testament, the second book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. The two books of Kings are broad historical outlines that condense hundreds of years into a few chapters. The books of the prophets are first-person stories set in the middle of those events. The book of Isaiah shows the prophet giving advice to Ahaz. Second Kings shows Ahaz ignoring him:

Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, “I am your servant and vassal. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram and of the king of Israel, who are attacking me.”

And Ahaz took the silver and gold found in the temple of the Lord and in it the treasuries of the royal palace and sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria. The king of Assyria complied by attacking Damascus and capturing it. He deported its inhabitants to Kir and put Rezin to death.

- 2 Kings 16:7-9 

Ahaz turned to Assyria to protect Judah from Syria and Israel. It worked in the moment, but had catastrophic long-term consequences. Assyria was the biggest bully on the block in the ancient Middle East. The last thing that any country should have wanted was to insert Assyria into its affairs. Asking for help from the Assyrians was like asking for help from the mob in Goodfellas.



A couple years after conquering Syria, the Assyrians conquered Israel. Twenty years later, as we see in Isaiah 1, they were outside the walls of Jerusalem. Isaiah warned Ahaz about what would happen:

The Lord will bring upon you and your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim [Israel] broke away from Judah -- he will bring the king of Assyria.

In that day the Lord will whistle for flies from the Nile delta and for bees from the land of Assyria. They will all come and settle in the steep ravines and in the crevices of the rocks, on all the thorn bushes and at all the water holes. In that day the Lord will use a razor hired from beyond the Euphrates River -- the king of Assyria -- to shave your head and your private parts, and to cut off your beard as well.

- Isaiah 7:17-20 

Ahaz could not see how the actions he took to solve his current emergency would lay the seeds for a worse one down the road. His lack of foresight almost doomed his country. In that sense, he was no different than any other human leader. None of us can predict the future.

That is something that I've realized as I've gotten older. I'm 32, which means I'm old enough to remember almost 20 years of political debates. The things we were talking about 15-20 years ago are not the things we are talking about today. In relatively short amounts of time, the world changes in ways that are impossible to anticipate.

I was a high school senior in 2004. George W. Bush was running for re-election against John Kerry. The economy was still humming. Social media hadn’t been invented. The primary issue was the war in Iraq, which was still fairly popular at the time. Kerry wasn’t even running an anti-war campaign. His main argument was that he was more qualified to run the war because he was a Vietnam War hero and a longtime Senator with more foreign policy experience than Bush. Bush countered that Kerry was lying about his war record and that he didn’t have any consistent principles besides trying to win elections.

If you listen to the media, every election is the most important one of our lifetime. The funniest part about Time Magazine saying “the stakes could not be higher for the whole world” in Bush vs. Kerry is that the more important story from the perspective of 2019 was hidden away in the top right corner of the page.

So while the election of 2020 certainly feels like the most important election of our lifetime, that is how people felt in 2004, too.

Put away politics for a second. Does anyone, whether Republican or Democrat, think electing John Kerry in 2004 would have changed the course of the last 15 years? He wasn’t exactly an Old Testament prophet campaigning on the issues that would shape our country. He wasn’t warning about the the housing bubble or the broader collapse of societal trust that eventually lead to Trump. Few saw any of that coming. No one predicted the rise of social media and how it would fundamentally change our society.

It was the same thing 3,000 years ago. When Ahaz asked Tilgath-Pilaser for help in 727 BC, he had no way of knowing that Sennacherib would take over in 703 BC, beginning a military expansion that would let Assyria dominate the region and pose a far greater threat to Judah than the alliance of Israel and Syria.

Isaiah saw it coming. But that wasn't because he was smarter than anyone else. He was just listening to a higher power:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

- James 4:13-15 

So what are we supposed to do in 2019? How do we make sense of what's going on in the world? Which decisions that we make today are really going to matter down the road? There are no prophets like Isaiah to give us answers. The ultimate function of the Old Testament prophets was to point to Jesus. And he’s already come.

We can’t see the big picture anymore than Ahaz. That's why the most important thing for believers to do over the next 12 months is to keep an even keel. You can’t despair if the election doesn’t go your way. Conversely, you can’t be too prideful if it does.

Maybe this is the most important election of our lifetimes. But maybe it isn't. There's no way to know. The only thing that I can predict is that, no matter what happens, they are going to tell us the 2024 election is the most important one of our lives, too.

The odds are that what's really going to matter in 2036 is something we aren't even considering in 2020. We have to give up control of our lives. Because the reality is that we never had any to begin with.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you -- you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

- Matthew 6:25-34