I will not ask: This short response may be completed as Good News Translation has done: “I will not ask for a sign.” Bible en français courant says “No, I will ask for nothing.”

And I will not put the LORD to the test: Putting to the test in the sense of finding something out or doing research is not necessarily a wrong or bad thing (see Jdg 6.39; Eccl 2.1). It does have a negative meaning in Deut 6.16, which says you should not “put the LORD your God to the test.” So when Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign, he seems to do it out of piety. But the more likely reason is that he has already decided to follow his own course of action and invite the Assyrians for help. He would rather trust Assyria than Yahweh, so he simply refuses any sign. For this clause New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translates “and I will not test the LORD.” Another possibility is “I will not ask the LORD for proof.”

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Ahaz answered, “I have no intention of asking Yahweh for proof, or of putting him to the test!”

• Ahaz replied, “I certainly will not ask Yahweh to give me a sign, nor do I want to find out [whether he can help]!”

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .