In like manner, commenting on the second verse of the fourth chapter of Isaiah, where it is said, _In that day shall the branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious_, he says it is still Hezekiah and events transpiring in his reign that are alluded to, the king nevertheless being to be seen as a type of Christ. The remarkable fourteenth verse of chapter vii. of the same writer, of which so much has been made, Villanovanus refers immediately to the times in which it was written. Syria and Ephraim confederate, under their kings Rezin and Pekah, are at war with Judah and threatening Jerusalem, whose king, Ahaz, the Prophet comforts with the assurance that the invasion, however formidable it looks, will come to nothing, and bids him ask for a sign from Jehovah that such will be the case. But Ahaz declining to do so, the Prophet volunteers a forecast of what he declares will come to pass, saying, _Behold, a virgin_ (Almah--a young marriageable woman) _shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel; and before the child shall know good from evil_ [arrive at years of discretion] _the land will be freed from its enemies_. ‘The Aramæans,’ says Villanovanus, ‘have come up in battle array against Jerusalem, and the prophet speaks of a young woman who shall conceive and bear a son, the young woman being no other than Abijah, about to become the mother of Hezekiah--strength or fortitude of God--and Immanuel--God with us--before whose reign the two kings, the enemies of Judah, will have been discomfited.’ The _For unto us a child is born_, &c., of chapter ix., he further refers to Hezekiah, for it was in his reign that Sennacherib and the Assyrians suffered such a signal defeat, the angel of Jehovah, according to the account, having slain in one night an hundred and four score and five thousand of them. _For they shall cry unto the Lord of Hosts in the land of Egypt, and he will send them a Saviour and he shall deliver them_ (Ib. xix. 20). ‘The Saviour,’ says Villanovanus, ‘is still no other than Hezekiah. Egypt as well as Judah, oppressed by the Assyrians, is relieved when the great army of Sennacherib is wrecked by the angel of Jehovah.’ _Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf be unstopped_ (Ib. xxxv. 5), _i.e._ ‘Liberation from the yoke of the Assyrians will do much towards giving the Jewish people clearer and better ideas of God.’