Isaiah 7:8
For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
Isaiah 7:8 lays out the enemy's order with Damascus as the capital of Syria and Rezin as its king, while Ephraim means the ten northern tribes called Israel ruling from Samaria under Pekah and not Judah. It was given as the Lord's assurance to Ahaz that the conspiracy of Rezin and Pekah to destroy him and set another king over Judah would fail. It predicts that within sixty-five years from 742-741 B.C., meaning before that period ended, Ephraim would be so completely broken as to cease to exist as a people or nation. It was literally broken nineteen years later when Israel was carried into Assyrian captivity in 723 B.C., and finally ended as a nation never to be restored through successive Assyrian deportations by Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser and Esarhaddon in 697-696 B.C., while those who held other reckonings placed its final end in Esarhaddon's invasion in 676 B.C. or in 677 B.C. when Manasseh was carried to Babylon. That breaking was God's covenant punishment scattering Israel for disobedience, and its literal fulfillment in ordinary human time shows that definite prophetic periods are fulfilled as predicted.
Words and Historical Setting
Damascus is the head of Syria, and Rezin is the ruler of Damascus, Syria's king, with Damascus as its capital. Ephraim is the ten northern tribes, also called Israel, whose kings ruled from Samaria under Pekah, Remaliah's son. It refers to Israel, not Judah, and therefore does not predict Judah's captivity nor include Manasseh, king of Judah.
Within threescore and five years means before that period ended, not at its close. The verse belongs to Isaiah's prophecies and historical accounts from his active years, addressed to the public concerns of Judah's rulers and people.
It is part of the Lord's assurance to Ahaz that the conspiracy of Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, against Judah would not succeed. Their plan was to destroy Ahaz and set another king over Judah, and the Lord's message declared that this plan would fail. The account reproves the king's lack of faith in God and describes Ahaz's stubbornness.
Prophecy and Its Fulfillment
The prophecy foretold that Ephraim would be broken so completely that within sixty-five years from its utterance in 742-741 B.C. it would cease to exist as a people or nation. It was literally broken when Israel was carried into Assyrian captivity in 723 B.C., nineteen years after the prophecy of 742 B.C. That end came through successive Assyrian deportations, in which Tiglath-pileser took some Israelites captive, Shalmaneser carried Israel away after taking Samaria, and Esarhaddon's later deportation ended the ten tribes' existence as a nation in 697-696 B.C., and Israel was never restored as a nation.
The same sixty-five-year destruction as a nation was literally fulfilled when, in 676 B.C., Esarhaddon invaded Ephraim and carried away another group of Israelites, ending the ten tribes' national existence. It was fulfilled when Israel was no more a nation at the time Manasseh was carried captive to Babylon in 677 B.C., and that year begins the seven times of bondage of God's people to Babylon literal and mystical, seven times 360 revolutions making 2520 years, 677 years before Christ and the rest after, ending in A.D. 1843 when their punishment ends. The breaking of Ephraim as a people is the starting point for reckoning the seven times, or 2520 years, of captivity, not the capture of Manasseh, king of Judah, in 677 B.C.
It stands as one example of a definite prophetic time period that was fulfilled as predicted and literally fulfilled, showing that events predicted within a specified period could occur in accordance with the prophecy. Its fulfillment shows that prophetic time periods can be measured by ordinary human time and fulfilled precisely.
Doctrine Types and Warnings
The threatened breaking was God's covenant punishment for disobedience, shattering the national power of Ephraim so that it would no longer exist as a people or nation, and scattering the people. The surrounding prophecy identifies Damascus as the capital of Syria under its king Rezin, and Ephraim as Israel under Pekah son of Remaliah, and it joins their rejection of God's gentle rule to the coming Assyrian invasion and destruction within sixty-five years. The stubbornness of Ahaz in that crisis becomes the historical basis for the prophecy of the coming Deliverer, Christ.
The conspiracy against Judah recorded here, with the king reproved for his lack of faith in God, stands with the conspiracies of the surrounding chapters as types of conspiracies in the last days. The sixty-five-year span to the breaking of Ephraim is one of the prophetic time periods that must be fulfilled in history before the final proclamation of the gospel. That breaking ranks among the evils God has brought upon men in the past, yet none of those past evils has equaled the evils to come in the great day of the Lord, emphatically called the great day of His wrath.