[Footnote 4: By a minute and trifling exposition of what is to be understood as a whole, and comprehensively, many misunderstandings have been introduced into this passage. The defeat of Asshur should take place very soon, but the devastation of the country had been so complete that a longer time would be required before the fields would be again _completely_ cultivated.]
[Footnote 5: _Gesenius_ mentions _Pellicanus_ as the first defender of the Non-Messianic interpretation. But this statement seems to have proceeded from a cursory view of an annotation by _Cramer_ on _Richard Simon's Kritische Schriften_ i. S. 441, where the words: "this historical interpretation _Pellicanus_ too has preferred," do not refer to Isaiah but to Daniel. Nor is there any more ground for the intimation that _Theodorus_ a Mopsuesta rejected the Messianic interpretation.]
THE PROPHECY, CHAP. VIII. 23-IX. 6. (Chap. ix. 1-7.) UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN.
In the view of the Assyrian catastrophe, the Prophet is anxious to bring it home to the consciences of the people that, by their own guilt, they have brought down upon themselves this calamity, and, at the same time, to prevent them from despairing. Hence it is that, soon after the prophecy in chap. vii., he reverts once more to the subject of it. The circumstances in chap. viii. 1-ix. 6 (7) are identical with those in chap. vii. Judah is hard pressed by Ephraim and Aram. Still, some time will elapse before the destruction of [Pg 67] their territories. The term in chap. vii. 16: "Before the boy shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good," and in chap. viii. 4: "Before the boy shall know to cry, My father and my mother," is quite the same. This is the less to be doubted when it is kept in mind that, in the former passage, evil and good must be taken in a physical sense. The sense for the difference of food is, in a child, developed at nearly the same time as the ability for speaking. If it had not been the intention of the Prophet to designate one and the same period, _he ought to have fixed more distinctly the limits between the two termini._ It might, indeed, from chap. viii. 3, appear as if at least the nine months must intervene between the two prophecies of the conception of the son of the Prophet, and his birth. As, however, it cannot be denied that there is a connection between the giving of the name, and the drawing up of the document in vers. 1 and 2, we should be obliged to suppose that, in reference to the first two futures with _Vav convers._ the same rule applies as in reference to ויצר, in Gen. ii. 19. The progress lies first in ותלה; the event falling into that time is the birth.