7:18
This verse refers to Egypt and Assyria. Israel had a very bad habit of looking to Egypt for help, and this always proved disastrous, and did so during the Assyrian and Babylonian crises. Assyria was the dominant nation at the time and would lead the onslaught. The most frightening aspect of this for Judah is that it is the Lord who calls upon Assyria to attack.
7:19,20
In the previous verse God talked about flies and bees, we now learn why He used this metaphor. They would get everywhere, there would be no escape. When there is impending disaster it is human nature to work out the ways in which we can either avoid the disaster altogether, or at least mitigate the effects. There would be no possibility of doing this. The reference to shaving probably has a twofold meaning. First, shaving off someone's hair was looked on as demeaning, and Sennacherib wrote of “I cut off their beards”, it was a sign of his utter domination. A second meaning could be that the attack would be so close to destroying Judah, but would fail at the last, which is what actually happened, as we shall read about in Isaiah 36-39.
7:21-25
The description of the poverty in the land continues. The description itself means little to us, and not that much to the commentators either as far as I can tell. None seemed to have anything much to say about a “young cow and two goats”. Anyway, verse 23 makes it clear that things would not be good! The land would effectively become bandit country.
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