(4.) "The passage, chap. viii. 3, 4, presents the most marked resemblance to the one before us. If there the Messianic explanation be decidedly inadmissible, it must be so here also. The name and birth of a child serves, there as here, for a sign of the deliverance from the Syrian dominion. If then there the mother of the child be the wife of the Prophet, and the child a son of his, the same must be the case here also." But it is a priori improbable that the Prophet should have given to two of his sons names which had reference to the same event. To this must be added the circumstance, that the time is wanting for the birth of two sons of the Prophet. Before Immanuel knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, the country of both the hostile kings shall be desolated, chap. vii. 15; before Mahershalalhashbaz knows to cry My Father, My Mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried before the king of Assyria, chap. viii. 4. The two births hence coincide. At all events, it is impossible to find the time for a double birth by the same mother. Several interpreters (Gesenius, Hitzig, Hendewerk,) assume the identity of Immanuel and Mahershalalhashbaz; but this is altogether inadmissible, even from the difference of the names. It is the less admissible to assume a double name for the child, as the name Shearjashub plainly enough shews that the Prophet was in earnest with the names of his children; and indeed, unless they had been real proper names, there would have existed no reason at all for giving them to them. To have assigned several names to one child would have weakened their power. The agreement must, therefore, rather be explained from the circumstance, that it was by the announcement in chap. vii. 14 that the Prophet was induced to the symbolical action in chap. viii. 3, 4. He has, in chap. vii. 14, given to the despairing people the birth of a child, who would bring the highest salvation for Israel, as a pledge of their deliverance. The birth of a child and its name were then required as an actual prophecy of help in the present distress,--a help which was to be granted with a view to that Child, who not only indicates, but grants deliverance from all distresses, and to whom the Prophet reverts in chap. ix., and even already in chap. viii. 8.--Moreover, besides the agreement there is found a thorough difference. In chap. vii. the mother of the child is called העלמה, whereby a virgin only can be designated; in chap. viii., "the prophetess." In chap. vii. there is not even the slightest allusion to the Prophet's being the father; while in chap. viii. this circumstance is expressly and emphatically pointed out. In chap. vii. it is the mother who gives the name to the child; in chap. viii. it is the Prophet. Far closer is the agreement of chap. ix. 5 (6) with chap. vii. 14. It especially appears in the circumstances that in neither of them is the father of the child designated; and, farther, in the correspondence of Immanuel with אל גבור, God-Hero.
(5.) "Against the Messianic explanation, and in favour of that of a son of the Prophet, is the passage chap. viii. 18, where the Prophet says that his sons have been given to him for signs and wonders in Israel." But although Immanuel be erroneously reckoned among the sons of the Prophet, there still remain Shearjashub and Mahershalalhashbaz. The latter name refers, in the first instance only, to Aram and Ephraim specially; or the general truth which it declares is applied to this relation only. But, just as the name Shearjashub announces new salvation to the prostrate people of God, so the second name announces near destruction to the triumphing world hostile to God; so that both the names supplement one another. As signs, these two sons of the Prophet pointed to the future deliverance and salvation of Israel, and the defeat of the world; and the very circumstance that they did so when, humanly viewed, all seemed to be lost, was a subject for wonder. But that we can in no case make Immanuel a third son of the Prophet, we have already proved.
Ver. 15. Cream and honey shall he eat, when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good. Ver. 16. For before the boy shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the country shall be forsaken of the two kings of which thou standest in awe.
The older Messianic explanation has, in these two verses, exposed itself to the charge of being quite arbitrary. Most of the interpreters assume that, in ver. 15, the true humanity of the Saviour is announced. The name Immanuel is intended to indicate the divine nature; the eating of milk and honey the human nature. Milk and honey are in this case considered as the ordinary food for babes; like other children. He shall grow up, and, like them, gradually develope. Thus Jerome says: "I shall mention another feature still more wonderful: That you may not believe that he will be born a phantasm. He will use the food of infants, will eat butter and milk." Calvin says: "In order that here we may not think of some spectre, the Prophet states signs of humanity from which he proves that Christ, indeed put on our flesh." In the same manner Irenænus, Chrysostom, Basil, and, in our century, Kleuker and Rosenmüller speak.--But this explanation is altogether overthrown by ver. 16. Most interpreters assume, in the latter verse, a change of subject; by נער, not Immanuel, but Shearjashub, who accompanied the Prophet, is to be understood. According to others, it is not any definite boy who is designated by נער; but it is said in general, that the devastation of the hostile country would take place in a still shorter time than that which elapses between the birth of a boy and his development. Such is Calvin's view. But the supposition of a change of subject is altogether excluded, even by the circumstance that one and the same quality, the distinction between good and evil, is in both verses ascribed to the subject. Others, like J. H. Michaelis, refer ver. 16 also to the Messiah, and seek to get out of the difficulty by a jam dudum. It is not worth while to enter more particularly upon these productions of awkward embarassment. All that is required is, to remove the stone of offence which has caused these interpreters to stumble. Towards this a good beginning has been made by Vitringa, without, however, completely attaining the object. In ver. 14, the Prophet has seen the birth of the Messiah as present. Holding fast this idea, and expanding it, the Prophet makes him who has been born accompany the people through all the stages of its existence. We have here an ideal anticipation of the real incarnation, the right of which lies in the circumstance, that all blessings and deliverances which, before Christ, were bestowed upon the covenant-people, had their root in His future birth, and the cause of which was given in the circumstance, that the covenant-people had entered upon the moment of their great crisis, of their conflict with the world's powers, which could not but address a call to invest the comforting thought with, as it were, flesh and blood, and in this manner to place it into the midst of the popular life. What the Prophet means, and intends to say here is this, that, in the space of about a twelvemonth, the overthrow of the hostile kingdoms would already have taken place. As the representative of the cotemporaries, he brings forward the wonderful child who, as it were, formed the soul of the popular life. At the time when this child knows to distinguish between good and bad food, hence, after the space of about a twelvemonth, he will not have any want of nobler food, ver. 15, for before he has entered upon this stage, the land of the two hostile kings shall be desolate. In the subsequent prophecy, the same wonderful child, grown up into a warlike hero, brings the deliverance from Asshur, and the world's power represented by it.--We have still to consider and discuss the particular. What is indicated by the eating of cream and honey? The erroneous answer to this question, which has become current ever since Gesenius, has put everything into confusion, and has misled expositors such as Hitzig and Meier to cut the knot, by asserting that ver. 15 is spurious. Cream and honey can come into consideration as the noblest food only; the eating of them can indicate only a condition of plenty and prosperity. "A land flowing with milk and honey" is, in the books of Moses, a standing expression for designating the rich fulness of noble food which the Holy Land offers. A land which flows with milk and honey is, according to Numb. xiv. 7, 8, a "very good land." The cream is, as it were, a gradation of milk. Considering the predilection for fat and sweet food which we perceive everywhere in the Old Testament, there can scarcely be anything better than cream and honey; and it is certainly not spoken in accordance with Israelitish taste, if Hofmann (Weiss, i. S. 227) thus paraphrases the sense: "It is not because he does not know what tastes well and better (cream and honey thus the evil!), that he will live upon the food which an uncultivated land can afford, but because there is none other." In Deut. xxxii. 13, 14, cream and honey appear among the noblest products of the Holy Land. Abraham places cream before his heavenly guests, Gen. xviii. 8. The plenty in honey and cream appears in Job xx. 7, as a characteristic sign of the divine blessing of which the wicked are deprived. It is solely and exclusively vers. 21 and 22 that are referred to for establishing the erroneous interpretation. It is asserted that, according to these verses, the eating of milk and honey must be considered as an evil, as the sad consequence of a general devastation of the hind. But there are grave objections to any attempt at explaining a preceding from a subsequent passage; the opposite mode of proceeding is the right one. It is altogether wrong, however, to suppose that vers. 21, 22, contain a threatening. In those verses the Prophet, on the contrary, allows, as is usual with him, a ray of light to fall upon the dark picture of the calamity which threatens from Asshur; and it could, indeed, a priori, be scarcely imagined that the threatening should not be interrupted, at least by such a gentle allusion to the salvation to be bestowed upon them after the misery (comp. in reference to a similar sudden breaking through of the proclamation of salvation in Hosea, Vol. I., p. 175, and the remarks on Micah ii. 12, 13); but then he returns to the threatening, because it was, in the meantime, his principal vocation to utter it, and thereby to destroy the foolish illusions of the God-forgetting king. It is in the subsequent prophecy only, chap viii. 1; ix. 6 (7) that that which is alluded to in vers. 21, 22 is carried out. The little which has been left--this is the sense--the Lord will bless so abundantly, that those who are spared in the divine judgment will enjoy a rich abundance of divine blessings. Parallel is the utterance of Isaiah in 2 Kings xix. 30: "And the escaped of the house of Judah, that which has been left, taketh root downward, and beareth fruit upward."--If thus the eating of cream and honey be rightly understood, there is no farther necessity for explaining, in opposition to the rules of grammar, לדעתו by "(only) until he knows" (comp. against this interpretation Drechsler's Comment.). לדעתו can only mean: "belonging to his knowledge, i.e., when he knows."
Good and evil are, as early as Deut. i. 39: "Your sons who to-day do not know good and evil," used more in a physical than in a moral sense. Michaelis: "rerum omnium ignari." The parallel expression, "not to be able to discern between the right hand and the left hand," in Jonah iv. 11 (Michaelis: "discretio rationis et judicii, ut sciant utra manus sit dextra aut sinistra"
) likewise loses sight of the moral sense. But good and evil are very decidedly used in a physical sense in 2 Sam. xix. 36 (35), where Barzillai says: "I am this day fourscore years old, can I discern between good and evil, or has thy servant a taste of what I eat or drink, or do I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women?" The connection with the eating of cream and honey, by which the good and evil is qualified, clearly proves that good and evil are, in our passage, used in a similar sense. To the same result we are led by the circumstance also, that the evil precedes, which must so much the rather have a meaning, that nowhere else is this the case with this phrase. The evil, the bad food in the time of war, precedes; the good follows after it: Cream and honey, the good, he will eat when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, i.e., when he is beyond the time where he does not yet know to make any great difference between the food, and in which, therefore, the evil, the bad food, is felt as an evil. If the good and the evil be understood in a physical sense, then, in harmony with chap. viii. 4, we must think of the period of about one year. Moral consciousness develops much later than sensual liking and disliking.--The construction of מאס and בחר with ב points to the affection which accompanies the action.--כי in ver. 16 suits very well, according to the view which we have taken, in its ordinary signification, "for." The full enjoyment of the good things of the land will return in the period of about twelve months (in chap. xxxvii. 30 a longer terra is fixed, because the Assyrian desolation was much greater than the Aramean); for, even before the year has expired, devastation shall be inflicted upon the land of the enemies. האדמה comprehends at the same time the Syrian and Ephraimitish land.
From ver. 17-25 the Prophet describes how the Assyrians, the object of the hope of the house of David, and also the Egyptian attracted by them, who, however, occupy a position altogether subordinate, shall fill the land, and change it into a wilderness. The fundamental thought, ever true, is this: He who, instead of seeking help from his God, seeks it from the world, is ruined by the world. This truth, which, through the fault of Ahaz, did not gain any saving influence, obtained an accusing one; it stood there as an incontrovertible testimony that it was not the Lord who had forsaken His people, but that they had forsaken themselves. It was a necessary condition of the blessed influence of the impending calamity that such a testimony should exist; without it, the calamity would not have led to repentance, but to despair and defiance.--From the circumstance that in ver. 17, which contains the outlines of the whole, upon the words: "The Lord shall bring upon thee and thy people," there follow still the words: "And upon thy father's house," it appears that the fulfilment must not be sought for in the time of Ahaz only. In the time of Ahaz, the beginning only of the calamities here indicated can accordingly be sought for,--the germ from which all that followed was afterwards developed. Nor shall we be allowed to limit ourselves to that which Judah suffered from the Assyrians, commonly so called. It is significant that, in 2 Kings xxiii. 29, Nebuchadnezzar is called King of Asshur. Asshur, as the first representative of the world's power, represents the world's power in general.
We have still to submit to an examination those explanations of vers 14-16 which differ, in essential points, from that which we have given. Difference of opinion--the characteristic sign of error--meets us here, and that in a very striking manner, in those who oppose the convictions of the whole Christian Church.
1. Rosenmüller expressed his adherence to the Messianic explanation, but supposed that the Prophet was of opinion that the Messiah would be born in his time. Even Bruno Bauer (Critik der Synopt. i. S. 19) could not resist the impression that Immanuel could be none other than the Messiah. But he, too, is of opinion that Isaiah expected a Messiah, who was to be born at once, and to become the "deliverer from the collision of that time." This view has been expanded especially by Ewald. "False," so he says, "is every interpretation which does not see that the Prophet is here speaking of the Messiah to be born, and hence of Him to whom the land really belongs, and in thinking of whom the Prophet's heart beats with joyful hope, chap. viii. 8, ix. 5, 6 (6, 7)." But not being able to realize that which can be seen only by faith--a territory, in general, very inaccessible to modern exposition of Scripture--he, in ver. 14, puts in the real Present instead of the ideal, and thinks that the Prophet imagined that the conception and birth of the Messiah would take place at once. By עלמה he understands, like ourselves, a virgin; but such an one as is so at the present moment only, but will soon afterwards cease to be so;--and in supposing this, he overlooks the fact that the virgin is introduced as being already with child, and that her bearing appears as present. In ver. 15, the time when the boy knows &c., is, according to him, the maturer juvenile age from ten to twenty years. It is during this that the devastation of the land by the Assyrians is to take place, of which the Prophet treats more in detail afterwards in ver. 17 ff. But opposed to this view is the circumstance that, even before the boy enters upon this maturer age (ver. 16), hence in a few years after this, the allied Damascus and Ephraim shall be desolated; so little are these two kings able to conquer Jerusalem, and so certain is it that a divine deliverance is in store for this country in the immediate future. And, in every point of view, this explanation shows itself to be untenable. The supposition that a real Present is spoken of in ver. 14 saddles upon the Prophet an absurd hallucination; and nothing analogous to it can be referred to in the whole of the Old Testament. According to statements of the Prophet in other passages, he sees yet many things intervening between the Messianic time and his own; according to chap. vi. 11-13, not only the entire carrying away of the whole people, (and he cannot well consider the Assyrians as the instruments of it, were it only for this reason, that he is always consistent in the announcement that they should not succeed in the capture of Jerusalem), but also a later second divine judgment. According to chap. xi., the Messiah is to grow up as a twig from the stem of Jesse completely cut down. This supposition of His appearance, the complete decay of the Davidic dynasty, did not in any way exist in the time of the Prophet. According to chap. xxxix., and other passages, the Prophet recognised in Babylon the appearance of a new phase of the world's power which would, at some future period, follow the steps of the Assyrian power which existed at the time of the Prophet, and which should execute upon Judah the judgment of the Lord. We pointed out (Vol. I. p. 417 ff.) that in the Prophet Micah also, the contemporary of Isaiah, there lies a long series of events between the Present and the time when she who is bearing brings forth. Farther--In harmony with all other Prophets, Isaiah too looks for the Messiah from the house of David, with which, by the promise of Nathan in 2 Sam. vii. salvation was indissolubly connected, and the high importance of which for the weal and woe of the people appears also from the circumstance of its being several times mentioned in our chapter. Hence it would be a son of Ahaz only of whom we could here think; and then we should be shut up to Hezekiah, his first-born. But in that case there arises the difficulty which Luther already brought forward against the Jews: "The Jews understand thereby Hezekiah. But the blind people, while anxious to remedy their error, themselves manifest their laziness and ignorance; for Hezekiah was born nine years before this prophecy was uttered!"--"The eating of cream and honey" is, in this explanation, altogether erroneously understood as a designation of the devastated condition of the land. From our remarks, it sufficiently appears that the expression "to refuse the evil," &c., cannot denote the maturer juvenile age. And many additional points might, in like manner, be urged.