Isaiah 7:8

and within threescore and five years … people This clause is suspicious on several grounds. (1) Because of its position; Ephraim has not yet been mentioned, and a prophecy of its annihilation would hardly have been followed by an argument (9 a) which assumes its continued independence. (2) There is no analogy in the prophets for so exact a specification of time with regard to a distant event. When the prophets fix a term of years they use round numbers (ch. Isaiah 23:17, &c.). (3) Isaiah could not expect to allay the fears of Ahaz by a prediction that was not to be fulfilled for 65 years. In Isaiah 7:16 and ch. Isaiah 8:4 he foretells the overthrow of Pekah and Rezin within a very short period. Even Delitzsch, who defends the verse as a whole, admits the force of the last two objections and proposes to substitute the words "within a little while." But the great majority of commentators agree in regarding the whole clause as a marginal gloss, intended to be read afterthe first half of Isaiah 7:9. This view ought probably to be accepted; but Duhm rightly observes that the gloss must be a very old one, since a late annotator would almost certainly have dated the extermination of Ephraim from the destruction of Samaria in 721, about 15 years after Isaiah spoke. What precise event he had in his mind is indeed very uncertain. The most plausible conjecture remains that of Archbishop Ussher, who explained it of the settlement of foreign colonists in Samaria by Esarhaddon or Asshurbanipal (Osnappar, Ezra 4:2; Ezra 4:10). Sixty-five years from the assigned date of the prediction would bring us to about 670 b.c.; and Esarhaddon was succeeded by Asshurbanipal about 668. Of course the chronology need not be strictly accurate.