Isaiah9chapter 9

The darkness named here is dated. In 733–732 BC Tiglath-pileser III swept the north of Israel, took Galilee and Gilead, and carried the people to Assyria; his own annals record the campaign and the deportation numbers, and the territory was reorganized into Assyrian provinces. Zebulun and Naphtali were the first Israelite ground to lose its nationhood. The road called the way of the sea ran through it, which is why armies always came that way.

The relief images are farm and battlefield. A yoke is the bar across a draft animal's shoulders; the staff is the rod the driver used on its back; both are pictured snapped. Then a bonfire: every soldier's boot and every blood-soaked uniform thrown on the fire, because when a war is truly over the gear is fuel, not stores.

The four titles read like a royal accession. When a new king took the throne in Egypt and in the courts around Israel, he received a string of throne names announcing what his reign would be. This list ends with words no human king could take — Mighty God, Everlasting Father — and it is attached to a child.

The refrain about the outstretched hand runs through a description of northern arrogance that is almost comic. The bricks have fallen, so we will rebuild in cut stone; the sycamores are cut down, so we will use cedars. Sun-dried mud brick and cheap sycamore-fig timber were what ordinary people built with; dressed stone and imported Lebanese cedar were what kings built with. A ruined nation announcing an upgrade is a nation that has learned nothing.