Isaiah 7:15

Butter and honey shall he eat This has to be explained by Isaiah 7:22, where the eating of butter (lit. "thick milk") and (wild) honey is a symptom of the primitive simplicity to which human life is reduced by the cessation of agriculture. The meaning is that the youth of Immanuel will be spent amidst the privations of a land laid waste by foreign invaders.

that he may know This is the rendering of the Vulgate and other ancient versions, and is maintained still by a few scholars. But the idea that eating butter and honey promotes the formation of ethical character is somewhat bizarre. Translate with R.V. when he knoweth (more precisely "towards the time when, &c."). It must be admitted, however, that exactparallels to this use of the preposition cannot be produced (though cf. Genesis 24:63; Exodus 14:27). But what lapse of time is here indicated? The expression "refuse the evil and choose the good" must bear the same sense as in Isaiah 7:16, and from ch. Isaiah 8:4 we see that the event predicted in Isaiah 7:16 was expected to happen in a very short time, within two or three years from the date of the interview with Ahaz. It would seem, therefore, that the phrase denotes the age at which a child begins to exercise intelligent choice between the pleasant and the painful (cf. 2 Samuel 19:35). Most commentators, it is true, explain it of the development of moral consciousness, and think of a period of 10 or 12 years or even longer. But this introduces a needless discrepancy between this sign and that of Isaiah 8:4. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that Isaiah expected the Assyrian invasion of Judah (which of course is presupposed by Isaiah 7:15) to happen simultaneously with the destruction of Samaria and Damascus.