The Lord told Ahaz not to fear or be fainthearted, and he undertook to tell him how long it would be before Rezin and Pekah would be defeated and driven away. In fixing the time, Isaiah indulges in a poetic license, and purposely rendered it obscure. The language used expresses this meaning: If a virgin should conceive from that time, the day when the Lord spoke to Ahaz, the child would be born before his enemies would be subdued or driven away; but not a great while before, for when they were driven away, the child would still be so young as not to know how to refuse the evil and choose the good. If the Lord did not tell Ahaz in some way when his enemies would be subdued, then the object of the interview entirely failed; for that was just what Ahaz wanted to know, and which the Lord promised to disclose to him. Be not faint-hearted, neither be afraid, for in such a time your deliverance shall come. If the Lord wished to inform him that he would be delivered from Rezin and Pekah, after the Messiah spoken of in the Scriptures should come, which happened seven hundred years later, he would know no more after, than he did before he conversed with the Lord. The Lord did not tell him the precise day, but furnished Ahaz the data by which he might make his own calculations. A very simple answer is purposely obscured by connecting some things with it which have a remote bearing on the subject, and others which have no connection with it at all. "Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good," is an obscure allusion to the age of the child: and his name shall be called Immanuel, is of no significance, for he might as well be called by any other name. When we first read the passage, we see nothing distinct: all is in a kind of penumbra; but after looking for a short time, as in a curiously shaded picture, an image, an idea, shows or appears on the ground-work, well marked and defined. The explanation we have given of the passage from Isaiah is justified and made apparent by the language used in the first, second, and third verses of the eighth chapter of this prophet. It seems the Lord wished to prove to Ahaz, by actual demonstration, that what he promised should be fulfilled to the letter. The prophet says, he took with him two faithful witnesses and went in to the prophetess (who was the virgin) and she conceived and bare a son. Then when the son was born, the Lord said to the prophet, that before the child could pronounce the name of father or mother, "the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria." Tiglath Pileser, king of the Assyrians, did come to the aid of Ahaz, and made war on the Syrians--laid their country waste--took Damascus, and slew Rezin. He afflicted the land of Israel, and carried the people away captives. (Josephus, _Antiq_., book ix. chap. 12, sec. 3.) All this too within the time promised Ahaz, according to Isaiah.