How old is Immanuel in Isaiah 7:15?

Question

Isaiah 7:15-16 describes how before Immanuel knows the difference between good and evil that 1. he'll be eating curds and honey 2. Rezin and Pekah will be defeated:

חֶמְאָה וּדְבַשׁ יֹאכֵל לְדַעְתּוֹ מָאוֹס בָּרָע וּבָחוֹר בַּטּוֹב
He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good
כִּי בְּטֶרֶם יֵדַע הַנַּעַר מָאֹס בָּרָע וּבָחֹר בַּטּוֹב תֵּעָזֵב הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה קָץ מִפְּנֵי שְׁנֵי מְלָכֶיהָ
For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted

Approximately what age would this be referring to? Since Immanuel matures before the end of the Syro-Ephraimite War, can we use that as a clue? Is "eating curds and honey" a reference to a known age of a given child? One could imagine a modern author using a reference like "by the time the boy drives a car", placing the age around ~15-18.

Answer 1

I think Stephen Disraeli's answer is helpful.

I'd like to add that "curds and honey" are a very natural step to weaning. Weaning, according to Talmudic sources, would occur at around 24 months.

A child may go on nursing for twenty-four months, and from that time forward, he is like one who nurses from a non-kosher animal--these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Yehoshua says: a child may go on nursing even until he is a child of five years, but if he ceased and then returned (to nursing) after twenty-four months, behold he is like one who nurses from a non-kosher animal. See here.

Additionally, human mother's milk is relatively sweet, having a high amount of lactose. Fermented milk is sour, but quite healthy. Combining the two would be a natural transition to more solid food. I believe weaning could start as early as 6 months.

Secondly, the brain develops along a schedule. For the first 18-24 months the right brain develops. The left brain catches up quickly after that. The right brain is the visio-spatial and non-verbal communication center. The left side is where the language, and logical and linear thought occurs. Also, the pre-frontal cortex develops last. That's the executive function. Please note that there's extensive overlap; it's not like a hunk of brain just sits there, doing nothing, until it gets turned on. So, there's both a logical order and an integration going on.

So, all that to say that being able to process concepts of right and wrong, I would think, would be left-brain activities. So, 18 months would probably be average for knowing what the word 'no' means.

[Do searches on 'neurobiology' and brain development. I got my summarized information from a book called "The Soul of Shame", by Dr. Curt Thompson.]

So, the time span seems to be somewhere between 6 months and 2 years. Perhaps 12-18 months would be a good guess.

As a supportive sidebar, Dr. Weston Price, a Dentist of late 1800's, early 1900's, traveled around the world visiting many cultural groups trying to figure out why their teeth and jaw structure was so very healthy, unlike "advanced" Westerners. He developed a theory about a nutrient he called 'Activator X'. This nutrient is now thought to be K2. Anyway, my point in introducing this is that nearly all of the people groups he analyzed ate fermented foods of one kind or another (fermented foods tend to have high amounts of K2), and the people were (to our expectations) remarkably healthy. We've lost a lot of this knowledge which, based on positive experience, had been passed down from grandmother, to mother, to daughter. So, it shouldn't surprise us, but it does, that Near-Eastern women would transition their babies from mother's milk to solid food through the healthy addition of "curds and honey."

Answer 2

I suggest that we take ch8 v4 as a parallel. We are told there that the king of Assyria will overcome the two kings before a similar child "knows how to cry My Father or My Mother". In other words, before the child has learned how to speak. Family tradition says I spoke my first words at the age of two and a half, but this is supposed to be late. Perhaps the implication is "within eighteen months".

I suggest that "knowing how to refuse the evil and choose the good" should also be understood in baby terms, not as a moral choice but as a "what kind of food do I like?" choice. Again I must defer to parents, but "around eighteen months" might be a natural time to expect babies to get picky.

In considering the length of the deadline, we ought to remember that Isaiah is promising the end of what appears to be a close siege of Jerusalem, in which the people would presumably be close to starvation. A wait of a dozen years would be intolerable. Eighteen months offers real hope.

The narrative in 1 Kings ch16 connects the two events, the siege and the Assyrian response to the appeal of Ahaz. No dates are given, but the impression I get from the narrative is that the Assyrian reaction was reasonably prompt. Perhaps no later than the next campaigning season, not much more than twelve months away. An absolute maximum is implied by the fact that the invading Pekah son of Remaliah had been replaced by Hoshea the son of Elah, as king of Israel, in the twelfth year of Ahaz (1 Kings ch17 v1).

On the matter of eating curds and honey, surely the most immediate significance is that the child had ANY food at all. The availability of "curds and honey" means that the people can get out into the countryside, which tells us indirectly that the besieging armies have gone away.

At the same time, there may be an almost subliminal allusion to the old promise of "a land of milk and honey" (e.g. Exodus ch3 v17). This has the effect of equating the two times of deliverance, from the Egyptians and from the Israel-Syria alliance.