Commentari biblici

XXII.

(1) The burden of the valley of vision.—The “valley of vision” is Jerusalem, lying as it did (Jeremiah 21:13) in a valley, as compared with the hills round about it (Psalm 125:2). If we think of the prophet’s dwelling as being in the lower city, in the valley of Tyropœon, the epithet becomes still more appropriate. That valley would be to him in very deed a “valley of vision,” where he saw things present and to come. Possibly the name became more characteristic from the impulse given to the prophetic dreams of all who claimed to be seers. The prophet looks out, and sees the people in a state of excitement, caused probably by the near approach of the Assyrian armies. They are “on the house-tops,” the flat roofs of which were a customary place of concourse (Judges 16:27; Nehemiah 8:16), keeping their revels, as those do who meet the approach of danger with a reckless despair (Isaiah 22:13). By some commentators (Birks, Kay,) the “valley of vision” has been identified with Samaria.

(2) A joyous city . . .—It would seem from Isaiah 32:13 as if this was the characteristic on which Jerusalem, like Athens afterwards (Thucyd. ii. 40), specially prided itself.

Thy slain men are not slain with the sword . . .—The words imply something like a reproach of cowardice. Those who had perished had not died fighting bravely in battle, but by the pestilence which then, as at all times, was prevalent in the crowded streets of a besieged city.

(3) They are bound by the archers.—Better, fettered without the bow. The taunting charge of cowardice is carried farther. The rulers had ventured on a sortie, and had been captured without a struggle, not even drawing their bows in their defence.

(4) Therefore said I, Look away from me.—The tone is that of one who wishes to be alone in his sorrow. It is too deep for visits of consolation. He “refuses to be comforted.” Isaiah bewails the destruction of “the daughter of his people” in much the same strain as that of Jeremiah over a later catastrophe (Lamentations 3:48).

(5) For it is a day of trouble.—The earlier clauses paint the mental emotions of the coming day of judgment. In the latter we hear the actual crash of the battering-rams across the walls. The cry of the panic-stricken people shall rise to the surrounding mountains, possibly as to the hills from whence they expected help, either as true worshippers looking to Mount Zion (Psalm 121:1), or to the high places which were so long the objects of their worship, and which led their enemies to say that their gods were “gods of the hills, and not of the valleys” (1Kings 20:23).

(6) Elam . . . Kir . . .—The two nations are named as the chief elements of the Assyrian army then invading Judæa. Elam, previously named as the destroyer of Babylon (Isaiah 21:2), was at this time, as the inscriptions of Sargon show, subject to Assyria (Records of the Past, vii. 29). As in later history (Herod. i. 73, iii. 21; Jeremiah 49:35), it was conspicuous chiefly for its archers. “Kir,” named in 2Kings 16:11 as the region to which Tiglath-pileser carried off the people of Damascus, has been identified with the region near the river Kyros, the modern Georgia. There are, however, both linguistic and historical grounds against this identification, and we must be content to look on it as an otherwise unknown region of Mesopotamia. To “uncover the shield” was to draw it out of its leather case (comp. “Scutis tegumenta detrahere”; Cæs. Bell. Gall. 2:21), and so to be prepared for battle.

(7) That thy choicest valleys . . .—These were the valleys of Gibeon, Rephaim, Hinnom, and Jehoshaphat, which encircled Jerusalem on the west and south. They are painted as filled with the chariots and cavalry of the Assyrian army, ready to make their attack on the very gate of the city, the “great gate” named in Sennacherib’s inscription (Records of the Past, i. 39).

(8) And he discovered the covering of Judah—i.e., Jehovah removed the veil which till then had hidden the approaching danger from the eyes of the inhabitants, and laid bare their weakness to those of the invaders. The verbs which in the English version are in the past tense are really in a kind of prophetic present, painting the future as if actually passing before the prophet’s gaze.

The armour of the house of the forest.—More fully (as in 1Kings 7:2; 1Kings 10:17), “the house of the forest of Lebanon,” which appears to have been used as an arsenal, and to which the people now turn as their chief resource.