Isaiah prophesied for many years under many
different circumstances about many nations and about many different things on the mind of God.
When he began his prophetic ministry,
Assyria was at the forefront of world affairs. During Isaiah’s lifetime,
Samaria fell to the Assyrians and Jerusalem was besieged by them. Even Israel’s
neighbors had their own ill-fated run-ins with Sennacherib’s “unstoppable war
machine”. So naturally much of the earlier chapters of Isaiah is concerned
with current events. He would say things like, “Within sixty-five years Ephraim
will be shattered from being a people,” and then he lived long enough to see that very thing happen.