Is Isaiah about Jesus?
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What do these words from Isaiah ben Amoz mean for us?
My first instinct is to meditate on Isaiah 9 in light of its historical situation, which is bound up with the geopolitics of the late 8th century BCE. Assyria, under the aggressive leadership of Tiglath-Pileser III, is becoming an imperial force in Syria-Palestine, and the regional powers of Aram and Israel are committed to a coalition to resist the Assyrian advance. To their collective south lies Judah, whose king Ahaz is following a decades-long policy of cooperating with the Assyrians. Clearly, if the Aramean-Israelite resistance has any chance of success (and, in truth, it does not), it must first eliminate any threat to its rear from the Judaean king. And so the coalition invades Judah, in what scholars call the Aramean-Israelite War. But the Assyrians arrive in Syria-Palestine in 734 BCE, well before Aram and Israel can accomplish their designs for Judah. The coalition collapses, and Judah is saved.
