“The Lord Shall Bring Upon Thee the King of Assyria”

"With King Ahaz having rejected the word of the Lord, the prophet now proceeds to pronounce the penalties that would befall the king and the people of Judah. Instead of becoming a partner with the Assyrians, Ahaz and his people would become their prey. They would experience a devastation such as they had not seen since the days the northern tribes broke away from the united kingdom of the twelve tribes. Flies and bees would infest the land, and thorns and briers would take over the once-productive land. The people would be taken into captivity, and those who remain would have to forage for food. (Hoyt W. Brewster, Jr., Isaiah Plain and Simple [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1995], 70)

"Ahaz's failure to believe in the Lord led to the devastation of his land by the Assyrians, the same source to which he, in his twisted wisdom, had looked for deliverance. In fact, Isaiah said that God sent the Assyrians against his people to humble them (Isa. 10:5-11). The account of his appears in Isaiah 36-3 and 2 Kings 18-19, in which the writer explains: the 'king of Assyria came against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them' (Isa. 36:1). Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, boasted in his own records about how he conquered forty-six fortified cities plus innumerable smaller cities in their environs and carried their inhabitants into captivity. The kingdom of Judah was devastated. Of its cities, only Jerusalem survived. (Keith A. Meservy, Studies in Scripture, Vol. 4, ed. Kent P. Jackson [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1993], 98)" (Commentaries on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. by K. Douglas Bassett, [American Fork, UT: Covenant Publishing Co., 2003], 130-131)