What is the context?
The warning names Assyria as a coming calamity for Ahaz, his people and his father’s house. Relief from the two immediate enemies will not mean freedom from the consequences of seeking security elsewhere.
God summons forces associated with Egypt and Assyria as easily as calling flies and bees. Assyria becomes a hired razor, stripping away hair and beard in an image of humiliation and thorough loss. Ahaz’s payment to the Assyrian king in 2 Kings 16:7–9 makes the description especially pointed.
The land’s changed condition completes the warning. Survivors live from a few animals and their milk, while valuable vineyards become briers and thorns. Cultivated hills are given over to grazing and trampling. Curds and honey appear within this picture of a countryside whose settled farming life has been disrupted.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry reads the passage as a warning that rejecting God’s assurance leads into the calamities now announced. Wesley emphasizes the reversal in the hired razor: the power Ahaz pays for help becomes the means of his people’s suffering.
The animals, milk, thorns and abandoned vineyards describe life after devastation. There is food for those who remain, yet it comes amid the loss of the land’s former cultivation and wealth. The immediate escape from one threat has not made Ahaz’s chosen source of confidence safe.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.