ting of God. Ahaz had no doubt that the miracle
would really be performed; but he had a dislike to enter within the
mystical sphere. Who knows whether the God who grants the miracle is
really the highest God? comp. Is. x. 10, 11, xxxvi. 18-20, xxxvii.
10-12. Who knows whether He is not laying for him a trap; whether, by
preventing him from seeking the help of man. He is not to bring upon
him the destruction which his conscience tells him he has so richly
deserved? At all events the affording of His help is clogged with a
condition which he is resolved not to fulfil, viz., his conversion. A
better and easier bargain, he thought, could be struck with the
Assyrians; how insatiable soever they might be, they did not ask the
heart. How many do even now-a-days rather perish in sin and misery,
than be converted!

Ver. 13. "_And he said: Hear ye now, O house of David: Is it too little
for you to provoke man, that you provoke also my God?_"

When Ahaz had before refused to believe in the simple announcement of
the Prophet, his sin was more pardonable; for, inasmuch as Isaiah had
not proved himself outwardly as a divine ambassador, Ahaz sinned to a
certain degree against man only, against the Prophet only, by unjustly
suspecting him of a deceitful pretension to a divine revelation. Hence,
Isaiah continues mild and gentle. But when Ahaz declined the offered
sign, _God himself_ was provoked by him, and his wickedness came
evidently to light. It is substantially the same difference as that
between the sin against the _Son of Man_, the Christ coming outwardly
and as a man only (Bengel: _quo statu conspicu, quatenus aequo tum loco
cum hominibus conversabatur_), and the sin against the Holy Ghost who
powerfully glorifies Him outwardly and inwardly. It is the antithesis
[Pg 43] of the relative ignorance of what one is doing, and of the
absolute unwillingness which purposely hardens itself to the truth
known, or easy to be known. We say _relative_ ignorance; for an element
of obduracy and hardening already existed, if he did not believe the
Prophet, even without a sign. For the fact that the Prophet was sent by
God, and spoke God's word, was testified to all who would hear it, even
by the inner voice, just as in every sin against the Son of Man there
is always already an element of the sin against the Holy Ghost.--The
truth that godlessness is the highest folly is here seen in a very
evident manner. The same Ahaz who rejects the offer o