Paul the Poke

Isaiah 7:17 “The LORD will bring on you, on your people, and on your father’s house such days as have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah, the king of Assyria.”

A warning and judgment from God is coming to your people, Judah, the southern kingdom.  They have not experienced judgment from God since Israel had split. The kingdom split in 1 Kings 12. The event itself is noted in 1 Kings 12:16. When all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, “What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; to your tents, O Israel! Now look after your own house, David!” So Israel departed to their tents. The year of the split was approximately 920-930 BC. God tells them who the instrument of punishment is going to be, the king Assyria.

Isaiah 7:18 In that day the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

God causes this to happen.  The Hebrew word for “remotest” is qatesh. It means end, mouth, extremity, border, or outskirts per Strong’s Concordance.  He calls for the Egyptians with a hiss or a whistle from the “mouth” of the rivers. I take it to be from the Nile Delta. Assyria is symbolized as a bee. These two insects or countries will meet in the middle in the land of Judah. The flies will swarm and the bees will sting. Egypt and Assyria clashed in 701 BC (Ryrie Study Notes).

Isaiah 7:19 They will all come and settle on the steep ravines, on the ledges of the cliffs, on all the thorn bushes and on all the watering places.

These forces from Egypt and Assyria come in and take over. The word “all” is used three times in this verse. It refers to the foreign forces, thorn bushes, and water resources. It is the Hebrew word “kol”. It is defined as all, the whole of, any, each, every, anything, totality, everything. Foreign troups are everywhere. They stress out an area that already has depleted resources and limited food.

This entry was posted on March 2, 2013 at 10:52 PM and is filed under Isaiah with tags 1 kings 12, Assyria, bees, Divided Kingdom, Egypt, Flies, Isaiah 7, Israel, Judah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.