Ahaz and others

Week 27  Isaiah 7

I’m reading about Ahaz in chapter seven. Ahaz was one of Isaiah’s four kings (the prophecy begins: these visions concerning Judah and Jerusalem came to Isaiah son of Amoz during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah).
Uzziah Jotham Ahaz & Hezekiah are familiar names. In May I looked at all of the kings of Judah and ranked them Best-to-Worst. So I flipped back to that list to see where I’d placed Isaiah’s four:
Uzziah #8
Jotham #3
Ahaz #14
Hezekiah #2.
So Ahaz was 14th out of 15 kings. Not so good.
Isaiah didn’t give specific details about Ahaz’ numerous flaws (I had to reread Kings & Chronicles to see those).
What Isaiah did do was forecast Ahaz’ future: the Lord will bring a terrible curse on you, your nation, and your family…The mighty king of Assyria will come with his great army (plus eight more verses describing Judah’s national devastation).
But the thing is that rereading the Ahaz story I saw that the king of Assyria did not demolish Judah the way Isaiah described it. Sure…Ahaz ends up being a yes-sir-no-sir guy subject to Assyria. But Judah wasn’t demolished. That only came later – after Ahaz was dead & gone.
So it’s a reminder to me that I have to be careful about predictive prophesies. Isaiah’s forecast sounded like an exclusive just-for-you-Ahaz message. But it looks like Ahaz was just part of a longer range comprehensive future of the country over the next forty-or-fifty years.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 1:1 7:17 (NLT)