NOTES for Isa 7:1-25
In a hard hour for the king, and for his whole state as well, the Lord Himself, addressing the king, offers him the chance to ask Him for a sign. But the king did not take this opportunity, and his motivation appears quite pious: the king seems not to want to test the Lord, and he seems ready to entrust himself to His will. Yet the opposite is what happens, and in practice the king goes against the Lord's will precisely by refusing to ask Him. This means that there can also be false piety, when behind our talk about "trusting in a higher will" there can stand a basic unwillingness to act and choose. But He did not create us in His image and likeness so that we would fold our hands and drift with the current.
What Ahaz did not want to learn, Isaiah announced to the people: the prophecy of the birth of the Infant, whose very name, Immanuel, "God with us," means that with His coming into the world an unprecedented union of God and humanity will begin.
But before that, terrible and destructive disasters lie ahead, and the prophet speaks of them directly. And still there is the prophecy of the Infant, and hope is given to the people. A sign is given that the disasters are temporary, and it will not always seem that the Lord has turned away from the people.