“…
comparing the antitype with the type, even as Herod sought to destroy
the
Divine Child whose birth might be supposed to endanger his throne,
so
Ahaz, from a different motive indeed, may have sought to destroy
the
typical Immanuel, the prediction concerning whose birth foretold
the
ruin of Judah at the hands of Assyria”.
Charles
Boutflower, reading between the lines, came up with the fascinating theory that
Isaiah and his family had felt compelled - just like the Holy Family that it
typifies - to escape, by flight, from a wrathful king.
Here follows
Chapter V, “Immanuel”, from Charles Boutflower’s 1930 classic, The Book of
Isaiah, Chapters [I-XXXIX] in the light of the Assyrian
monuments.
“Butter and honey shall
he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil
and choose the
good.”—Isa. vii. 15.
In studying the Book of Isaiah, whether
for our own benefit or to edify others, the question will often force itself
upon us, Who was the typical Immanuel? and Who the maiden who typified the
Virgin Mother? To this question the commentators furnish various answers. But
not to bewilder my readers with endless discussions, I shall only lay before
them that answer which commends itself most to my own judgment. It seems, then,
to me that Immanuel was the prophet’s own son, and that the maiden who became
his mother was the prophet’s second wife. Isaiah’s first wife was the mother of
Shear-jashub. When the prophet at Jehovah’s command took Shear-jashub with him
and went to meet Ahaz, his first wife was dead; for he predicts that within a
year the nameless maiden, whom he intends to marry, will become the mother of
Immanuel.
Damien
Mackey’s comment:
According, though, to my recent article:
Was
Hosea’s boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah’s famous son, Immanuel?
(2) Was Hosea's
boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah's famous son, Immanuel?
the mother
of Isaiah’s first son, Shear-jashub, was the self-same woman as was the mother
of Immanuel.
Charles Boutflower
continues:
After the birth of Immanuel this young
woman, now the prophet’s wife, is very suitably called “the prophetess,” just
as Solomon’s wives are called ‘‘queens” … and about a year later bears him a
child, who is called Mahershalalhashbaz. The grounds for this opinion are as
follows. In chap. viii. 18 the prophet says, “Behold, I and the children whom
the LORD hath given me are for signs.” He does not say that any other person’s
children are for signs: he only mentions his own. ….
In what way Isaiah
and Shear-jashub were signs when they appeared before king Ahaz in an acted
parable we saw in our last chapter. It now remains to add that all three
children, Shear-jashub, Immanuel, and Mahershalalhashbaz, were also signs in
virtue of the names given to them. Thus the name Shear-jashub, “a remnant shall
return,” finds its explanation in chap. x. 20-22, “And it shall come to pass in
that day, that the remnant of Israel, and they that are escaped of the house of
Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon
the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant shall return, even the
remnant of Jacob, unto the Mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the
sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall return.” This is a promise that a
small fraction of the nation, who have escaped from the Assyrian deluge, shall
no longer look for help to the power that smote them, but shall return in all
sincerity to their Almighty Deliverer, the Holy One of Israel.
The significance of
the name Immanu-El, as we have already seen, lies in this, that God is with us, i.e . with those
who put their trust in Him. So then, should the rising flood of Assyrian
invasion overwhelm the Northern Kingdom, and sweep onward into Judah, reaching
even unto the neck, yet the nation shall not go under, for the land thus
submerged is “thy land, O Immanu-El.” O With us-God! “Make an uproar,” then, “O
ye peoples,” that go to form Assyria’s mighty host: mobilise your forces, arm
yourselves for the conflict. It is all to no purpose: “ye shall be broken in
pieces.” Let the wisest of your military strategists take counsel together, and
issue their commands to the troops under them: all shall be of no avail, your
counsels “shall be brought to nought,” your orders shall never take effect,
for—Immanu-El “God is with us!” ….
The name of the
prophet’s third child, Maher-shalal-hash-baz “Hasten booty, speed spoil,” is
explained by God immediately after the mention of his birth: “Call his name
Mahershalalhashbaz. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My
father, and My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be
carried away before the king of Assyria.” …. But if these three children were
all signs in virtue of the meaning of their names, there was one who was
specially so called at the time when his birth was predicted and his name
given. For when unbelieving Ahaz refused to ask for a sign, the prophet
replied, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” …. The above
considerations, then, may very well lead us to look on Immanuel as the
prophet’s own son, and to believe that Isaiah like Hosea had three children,
all of whose names were prophetic.*
Damien
Mackey’s comment:
According to my article above, Isaiah was Hosea – the prophet and his
wife having four children of whom we are informed: three boys and one
girl.
Charles Boutflower
continues:
But there is a yet further ground for
looking on Immanuel as Isaiah’s own son and as own brother to
Mahershalalhashbaz. It lies in this, that notes of time couched in similar
language were struck when the births of each of these children were announced:
the first note indicating a longer interval, the second a shorter one, before
the coming of the same event, viz. the downfall of Syria and Israel. Of
Immanuel it was said, ‘‘For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and
choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.” …. These words I have explained to mean,
Before the child is old enough to know what he may eat and what he must not
eat: an explanation which agrees with the previous context, where it is said
that he will eat butter and honey when he knows to refuse the evil and choose
the good. The note of time, therefore, in this instance signifies that within a
very few years the land of the two allied kings of Syria and Israel will be
desolated. As a matter of fact it was desolated within three years of the time
when the sign was given. In the case of Mahershalalhashbaz the note of time
begins with the same words, but points to a shorter interval: “For before the
child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and, My mother, the riches of
Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the king of
Assyria.” If the first mention of this child’s name was made in 734 B.C., and
his birth took place in the following year, then the above prediction, uttered
at the time of his birth, was fulfilled within about a year of that event.
Having regard, therefore, to these considerations, it seems most reasonable to
look upon Immanuel as the older brother of Mahershalalhashbaz. But this being
so, the “virgin,” who became the mother of these two children, must have been
Isaiah’s second wife [sic].
If on the above
grounds we are led to look upon the typical Immanuel as Isaiah’s own son, a
very interesting deduction follows: viz. that within a year or two of
Immanuel’s birth Isaiah must have left Jerusalem for a while and gone to live
in the now desolated land of Israel. For it is predicted of Immanuel that when
he is a young lad two principal articles of his diet will be butter and honey:
chap. vi. 15. And then, a little further on in the same chapter, it is
explained that this being obliged to depend on butter and honey, will be a
consequence of the Assyrian invasion: that owing to the depopulation of the
country, the land will go out of cultivation, and what is now vineyards and
cornfields will become thickets ; but that there will still be pasturage for
cattle, and the wild bees will still lay up their honied stores, so that
“butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst of the land.”
Now since this description of Immanuel’s surroundings in his early boyhood’s
years does not apply to Judah and Jerusalem, but does apply to the land of
Israel, and especially to northern Israel, the presumption is that Immanuel
while still a young lad was taken by his father to live in the northern
kingdom, and into that part of the kingdom whose inhabitants had so lately been
carried captive.
What was the reason
for a prophet, whose heart was so centred in Jerusalem, leaving the Holy City
and going to live in the desolated land of the Ten Tribes? In all probability
it was the wrath of Ahaz. When Isaiah confronted Ahaz and bade him ask a sign of
the LORD his God, the young king’s evasive answer showed that he was afraid of
the prophet ; and as he listened to the terrible denunciations from the lips of
Isaiah of the woes that were coming on his country because of the line of
policy which he had secretly resolved to pursue, fear must have ripened into
dislike and hatred. So then, comparing the antitype with the type, even as
Herod sought to destroy the Divine Child whose birth might be supposed to
endanger his throne, so Ahaz, from a different motive indeed, may have sought
to destroy the typical Immanuel, the prediction concerning whose birth foretold
the ruin of Judah at the hands of Assyria. …. In this case it would not be long
safe for the prophet and his son to remain in Jerusalem. But whither shall he
go when he leaves the Sacred City? To Ahaz he has spoken of Syria and Israel as
forming one land though under two kings. …. This is because these two powers
have for the time being made themselves into one: “Syria is confederate with
Ephraim,” literally “resteth on Ephraim.” In the long-ago days “Ephraim
departed from Judah’’—to use the prophet’s own words—and now her land is one
with the Syrians. But the days of Ephraim’s existence as a separate kingdom are
soon to come to an end. Within a few short years Ephraim “will be broken in
pieces that it be not a people.” …. And with this disappearance of the kingdom
of Ephraim before his mind the prophet seems to have hailed the thought that
the land occupied by the two Jewish kingdoms, so long divided politically, was
by Divine intention, no less than by nature, one land. Hence, when telling how
the flood of Assyrian invasion will sweep over both kingdoms, he speaks of the
two countries, thus for a time submerged, as “thy land, O Immanuel,” and Thine
in all its “breadth.” …. If, then, our prophet must leave Judah, he need not
leave Immanuel’s land: he will go into that part of it which has just been
placed under the rule of Hoshea … and for greater safety he will go into that
district which lies furthest off from the capital of king Ahaz: he will “withdraw
into the parts of Galilee”. …. That Galilee, whose name is so endeared to us
Christians, was then a deserted region, its inhabitants having been recently
taken captive to Assyria. Their sad fate had fixed itself indelibly on the
prophet’s mind. Nevertheless, the Spirit had revealed to him that there, where
the first blow had fallen, the bright light of happier days, the days of the
Messiah, should first dawn. ‘‘For there shall be no gloom,” he writes, ‘‘to her
that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of
Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it
glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people
that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” …. Many of the
inhabitants of Galilee, as the previous context shows, had been “driven away
into thick darkness’’; the darkness of a hopeless captivity. The present
population was scanty; but in the Messianic age, as the prophet foretells,
Jehovah will “multiply the nation’’ and thus “increase the joy”: a joy so great
that it can only be compared to the rejoicing before God at the harvest
festival, or to the dividing of the spoil after some signal victory. For
Assyria’s oppressive “yoke” and heavy “burden” no longer rests on the nation:
the taskmaster’s “staff’? no longer descends on its “shoulder.” …. The foe have
been put to flight as on that day when the countless hosts of Midian fled
before the sword of the LORD and of Gideon. They have vanished from the scene,
and soon all the vestiges of hateful war shall vanish likewise. Those
long-laced boots, in which the warriors of the enemy strode proudly amid the
tumult … their thick, close-fitting tunics, now dyed yet deeper with blood …
shall make fuel for the fire. …. And the pledge of all this is before his eyes
as he looks at his own Immanuel. Immanuel! the type, surely, of the
long-promised Davidic King! “For unto us,” he cries, ‘‘a child is born, unto us
a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder’’—his royal robe
fastened at the shoulder marking him as the Divinely constituted Ruler— “and
his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor,” fount of all political wisdom
and sagacity ; ‘‘Mighty God,” his people’s all powerful deliverer; “Everlasting
Father,” the father of his subjects, whose reign shall know no end; and then,
last and best of all, because most desired in that sad day of domestic troubles
and foreign invasion, “Prince of Peace”: peace, internal no less than external:
peace, the fruit of righteous rule and good government: peace, ever on the
increase with his ever-extending sway. How fondly does the prophet dwell on
this closing note! “Of the increase,” he cries, “of his government and of peace
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to
establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from
henceforth even for ever. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts shall perform this.” The
zeal of Jehovah, His jealousy for His people, ensures all. He is pledged to
help them by this God-given name, Immanuel.
It
will be seen from the above that we may reasonably suppose that the prophet
Isaiah, leaving Judah because of the wrath of Ahaz, went with his son Immanuel
into the land of Israel, and to that part of the land which was furthest off
from Jerusalem, and to which his sympathies were so strongly drawn when he
uttered his lament over the fate of Zebulun and Naphtali, and his glorious song
of exultation over the bright future which awaited that now darkened region.
Thus it was in Galilee that the early years of Immanuel must have been spent. And
this may seem to point forward to our Saviour’s peaceful home at Nazareth, just
as His early ministry “by the way of the sea,” i.e. the Sea of Galilee,
and the coming of the bright Gospel Day is foretold, as St. Matthew assures us,
in this very passage.” The hint of a withdrawal into Galilee contained in the
words which form the heading of this chapter, appears to have been lost on king
Ahaz, or, if noticed by him, may possibly have been welcomed as giving some
hope that he would soon be rid of this troublesome prophet. Fear and dislike
were probably the predominating feelings in his breast. There was, therefore,
no urgent haste for the prophet to leave Jerusalem at once. Accordingly, he was
no doubt there at the time when Immanuel was born, and also a little later,
when at Jehovah’s command he wrote on a large metal tablet … “with the pen of a
man,” i.e. with an ordinary graving-tool, but according to some
translators “in ordinary characters,” FOR MAHER-SHALAL-HASH-BAZ. …. This was
done in the presence of two witnesses, one of whom was “ Uriah the priest,”
presumably the high priest: … the object being, as Cheyne points out, that when
the prophecy involved in the name should be fulfilled, two men of rank would be
able to testify to its genuineness. But may there not also have been a further
object, viz. that the tablet might speak for the prophet in his absence? For
though he still remained on at Jerusalem nearly a year longer until the birth
of his third son, when the name written on the tablet was explained to mean
that before the newborn child should be able to call its parents, the crisis, which
began with the invasion of Judah by the armies of Syria and Israel, would end
with the carrying off by the king of Assyria of the spoils of those two
kingdoms; yet when that event took place he was gone, leaving behind him the
tablet and the word of two reliable witnesses to vouch for the genuineness of
the inscription and of the prophetic oracle enshrined in that long uncouth
name.
Agreeable, then, to
this view of Isaiah’s speedy departure from Jerusalem after the birth of
Mahershalalhashbaz are the instructions which occur in chap. viii very shortly
after the mention of that event: see verses 11 to 20. These instructions have
about them the appearance of parting words of advice given by the teacher to
his “disciples.” He warns them against being seized with panic fears like the
multitude around them. Their only fear must be a holy fear: the fear of Jehovah
of hosts. They are to have nothing to do with necromancy. Should the nation
leave their God, and resort for council to the dead?
No! the law and the instruction, the
teaching which they have received from his lips must be their guide. He also
bids them take every care of his written oracles. Let them be bound up and
sealed, that they may be preserved for future ages; for he has come to a pause,
a break in his prophetic activities. ‘‘I will wait,” he says, “for the LORD,
that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.” He will
wait until it shall please Jehovah to make further revelations to him. It may
well have been, then, that as in the days of Ahab of Israel the prophet Elijah,
acting on his own counsel, sought security by going outside Ahab’s kingdom; so
in the days of Ahaz of Judah, the prophet Isaiah, led by better guidance,
sought for safety by withdrawing beyond the dominions of Ahaz.
In
conclusion, let it be noted that just as the typical Virgin is merely mentioned
afterwards as the “prophetess,” i.e. the prophet’s wife: whilst the
typical Immanuel is introduced as inspiring the prophet with hope even when he
sees in vision Assyria’s vast hosts mustering for the conflict, and again when
he beholds the Assyrian deluge poured out over the land; so, in the Gospel
Story, there is a wonderful withdrawing from our view of the Blessed Virgin
that our gaze may be fixed on her Son, who is to His people, not only El
Gibbor “the Mighty God,” … but also Immanu-El “God with us.”
