Isaiah 9:8

THE GATHERING SHADOWS OVER ISRAEL

The remainder of this chapter and through the first four verses of the next, the prophecy returns to the great burden of much of Isaiah, namely, the total ruin and destruction of the sinful kingdom of the chosen people.

"The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, that say in pride and stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will put cedars in their place. Therefore Jehovah will set up on high against him the adversaries of Rezin, and will stir up his enemies, the Syrians before and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still."

This whole paragraph is a "judgment against bravado."[15] So much is "hewn stone" better than the bricks of that day, and so much as "cedars" were superior to sycamores, Ephraim mockingly rejects the chastening of the Lord, boasting that things will be only better for them, no matter what God does! This terrible paragraph foretold a time for Ephraim when even their former allies, the Syrians, would join the besieging armies of Assyria, to bring about Samaria's final extinction. "All the leading classes who had failed to repent and turn to God and who had been unfaithful to their trust would be totally destroyed, with all their children."[16]