Isaiah 7:6

Let us make a breach therein for us... — The words imply an assault on the line of fortresses that defended Judah (2 Chronicles 26:9; 2 Chronicles 32:1). If they were won the issue of the war would be practically decided. Jerusalem itself does not appear to have been actually besieged.

The son of Tabeal. — The mode of description, as in the last verse, indicates that the man was of low origin. The name “good is God” is Aramaic, and points to his being an officer in Rezin’s army. It meets us again in Ezra 4:7, among the Aramæan adversaries of Israel, and appears in the term Tibil in Assyrian inscriptions, which give us his actual name as Ashariah (Schrader, Keil Inschrift., p. 118). Tubaal appears in an inscription of Sennacherib as appointed by him as governor of Zidon (Records of the Past, i. 35). Dr. Kay, connecting the name with Tab-rimmon (“Rimmon is good”), conjectures that the substitution of El (“God”) for the name of the Syrian deity may indicate that he was the representative of the family of Naaman, and, like him, a proselyte to the faith of Israel.