Isaiah 7:6

6 "Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,"

Isaiah 7:6 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 7:6

Let us go up against Judah, and vex it
By besieging or distressing it; or "stir it up" to war, as Jarchi interprets it: and let us make a breach therein for us;
in the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and enter in at it; the Targum is,

``let us join, and put it to us;''

and so Jarchi, let us level it with us, as this valley, which is even: the sense may be, let us make a breach and division among them, and then part the kingdom between us ^F3; or if we cannot agree on that, let us set up a king of our own, as follows: and set a king in the midst of it, [even] the son of Tabeal;
which Jarchi, by a situation of the alphabet the Jews call "albam", makes it to be the same with Remala, that is, Remaliah; and so supposes, that the intention was to set Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, over Judah; but it is not reasonable to think that the king of Syria should join in such a design; and besides, the method of interpretation, Aben Ezra says, is mere vanity; and whose sense of the words is much preferable, taking Tabeal to be the name of some great prince, either of Israel or of Syria; and so Kimchi thinks that he was a man of the children of Ephraim, whom they thought to make king in Jerusalem. The Targum understands not any particular person, but anyone that should be thought proper; and paraphrases it thus,

``let us appoint a king in the midst of it, who is right for us,''

or pleases us; the name seems to be Syriac, see ( Ezra 4:7 ) ( 1 Kings 15:18 ) . Dr. Lightfoot thinks it is the same with Tabrimmon, the name of some famous family in Syria. One signifies "good God": and the other "good Rimmon", which was the name of the idol of the Syrians, ( 2 Kings 5:18 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F3 So Noldius, Elr. Concord. Part. p. 62. renders its "let us divide it among us".

Isaiah 7:6 In-Context

4 and say to him, 'Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.

5 'Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying,

6 "Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,"

7 thus says the Lord GOD: "It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass.

8 "For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people ),

Footnotes

• [a]. Lit "cause it a sickening dread"
• [b]. Lit "it"