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Context No. 224 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 22:1-11: in context

1The burden of the valley of vision. What ails you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops? 2You that are full of shouting, a tumultuous city, a joyous town, your slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle. 3All your rulers fled away together. They were bound by the archers. All who were found by you were bound together. They fled far away. 4Therefore I said, “Look away from me. I will weep bitterly. Don’t labor to comfort me for the destruction of the daughter of my people. 5For it is a day of confusion, and of treading down, and of perplexity from the Lord, GOD of Armies, in the valley of vision, a breaking down of the walls, and a crying to the mountains.” 6Elam carried his quiver, with chariots of men and horsemen; and Kir uncovered the shield. 7Your choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at the gate. 8He took away the covering of Judah; and you looked in that day to the armor in the house of the forest. 9You saw the breaches of David’s city, that they were many; and you gathered together the waters of the lower pool. 10You counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. 11You also made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you didn’t look to him who had done this, neither did you have respect for him who planned it long ago.

Isaiah calls Jerusalem the valley of vision, and this oracle falls on the city during a siege, most likely the Assyrian threat under Sennacherib in Hezekiah's day. The city is in an uproar, its people crowded onto the rooftops, and Isaiah says the noise does not match what is actually happening.

He notices strange things. The dead are not slain with the sword or fallen in battle, so these are deaths of panic and hunger, not of a fight. The rulers did not lead a defense, they fled and were caught without a struggle. And the people, faced with the breaches in the wall, go to work with real competence. They take stock of the weapons in the armory, they count the houses of Jerusalem and pull some of them down for stone to patch the wall, and they build a reservoir between the two walls to secure the water supply. That last detail matches the waterworks Hezekiah cut through solid rock, a tunnel archaeologists have found and read.

None of the preparations are foolish, and that is Isaiah's actual charge. You made a reservoir, he says, but you did not look to the one who brought this about, or have any regard for the one who planned it long ago. They fortified everything except their attention to God, and the busywork of defense became a way not to face him. When trouble comes, what sensible, competent preparing do I hide inside, so that I never have to look up?

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