Isaiah 22:1-14

Isaiah 22:1-14. The inexpiable sin of Jerusalem

The key to this passage the most lurid and minatory of all Isaiah's prophecies is the irreconcileable antagonism between the mood of the prophet and the state of public feeling around him. In a time of universal mirth and festivity he alone is overwhelmed with grief and refuses to be comforted. In the rejoicings of the populace he reads the evidence of their hopeless impenitence and insensibility, and he concludes his discourse by expressing the conviction that at last they have sinned beyond the possibility of pardon. The circumstances recall our Lord's lamentation over Jerusalem on the day of His triumphal entry (Luke 19:41 ff.).

It may be regarded as certain that the prophecy belongs to the period of Sennacherib's invasion (701), although it is difficult to select a moment when all the elements of the highly complex situation with which it deals might have been combined. There is just one incident that seems to meet the requirements of the case, viz., the raising of the blockade of Jerusalem, in consequence of Hezekiah's ignominious submission to the terms of Sennacherib (see General Introd., pp. xxxviii f.) It must be noted that this was not the last episode in that memorable campaign. The real crisis came a little later when the Assyrian king endeavoured by threats to extort the entire surrender of the capital. It was only at that juncture that Hezekiah unreservedly accepted the policy of implicit trust in Jehovah which Isaiah had all along urged on him; and it was then that the prophet stepped to the front with an absolute and unconditional assurance that Jerusalem should not be violated. That the earlier deliverance should have caused an outbreak of popular joy is intelligible enough; as it is also intelligible that Isaiah should have kept his eye fixed on the dangers yet ahead. The allusions to the recent blockade are amply accounted for, and the prophet's expectation of a terrible disaster yet in store is obviously based on his view of the continued and aggravated impenitence of his countrymen.

The following analysis of the prophecy is partly influenced by this reading of the historical setting, and it is right to say that at one or two points the view adopted is somewhat tentative.

2 Samuel 22:1; 2 Samuel 22:1. While the city abandons itself to demonstrations of frantic gaiety, in spite of the disgrace that has overtaken the country, Isaiah shuts himself up in solitary and inconsolable anguish.

ii. Isa 22:5-7. He sees in vision a great day of calamity approaching, when the Assyrian shall again thunder at the gates of Jerusalem; and although the picture is not completed it leaves the impression that the city's day of doom has arrived.

iii. Isa 22:8-11. At this point (although the transition is extremely abrupt) the prophet seems to go back to the past, in order to trace the evidence of the people's unbelief. In the height of the danger they had paid minute attention to human measures of defence, but with never a thought of Him whose strange work then appealed so closely to their conscience.

iv. Isaiah 22:12. And this spirit of unbelief remains with them still. It has caused them to misread the providential lesson of their escape, and to find an occasion of thoughtless revelry and merriment in what was so obviously a call to serious reflection and penitence. For such a sin Isaiah has only a "fearful looking-for of judgment" to announce.