Conclusion to 2 Nephi 17

[pam]

Ahaz’s failure to believe in the Lord led to the devastation of his land by the Assyrians, the same source to which he, in his twisted wisdom, had looked for deliverance. In fact, Isaiah said that God sent the Assyrians against his people to humble them (Isa. 10:5-11). The account of this appears in Isaiah 36-37 and 2 Kings 18-19, in which the writer explains: the “king of Assyria came against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them” (Isa. 36:1). Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, boasted in his own records about how he conquered forty-six fortified cities plus innumerable smaller cities in their environs and carried their inhabitants into captivity. The kingdom of Judah was devastated. Of its cities, only Jerusalem survived.”

Keith A. Meservy, Studies in Scripture, Vol. 4, ed. Kent P. Jackson, [salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1993], 98

After Ahaz turned down Isaiah’s advice, he went straight to the temple, stripped it of all its precious ornaments, and sent them to the king of Assyria as a bribe to induce him to immediately attack Syria and the northern Ten Tribes before they attacked Judah. In this verse [20] Isaiah is assuring Ahaz that although the Assyrians were like a “razor that is hired” (hired by Ahaz, in fact!), they would nevertheless turn around and shave Judah.

W. Cleon Skousen, Isaiah Speaks to Modern Times [salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Co., 1984], 206

For me, the greatest lesson in this chapter is the promise of Immanuel—the assurance that “God is with us.” I believe that this chapter is about the danger of pursuing foolish alliances instead of a relationship with the greatest Ally of all. Isaiah was trying to tell Ahaz that it doesn’t matter if Syria is “with you” or Israel is “with you.” What matters is that God is with you. Any other alliance is meaningless, or worse, a distraction from the only alliance that matters. As we have seen so many times in these Isaiah chapters, when covenant Israel obeys, God is with them—past, present, and future. Paul wrote, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

In our day, we are tempted to form alliances—perhaps not with neighboring kingdoms, but in our quest for wealth, our physical appearance, our image, or notoriety. When we seek security in the things of the world, the world eventually turns on us, just as the Assyrians turned on Ahaz, and the alliances we’ve formed give us no support but crumble under our feet. As someone once said, “Unless you have chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”

John Bytheway, Isaiah for Airheads, p. 112