Isaiah 22 Bible study: The valley of vision

"The burden of the valley of vision" (22:1). It is the ninth of the eleven burdens the book's introduction lists, from Babylon (13:1) to "the animals of the South" (30:6), and here is what almost everyone misses: this one is spoken to Jerusalem. Most of the burdens name a nation or a city in their heading: Babylon (13:1), Moab (15:1), Damascus (17:1), Egypt (19:1). This heading names none, but its verses do: "He took away the covering of Judah" (22:8), "You saw the breaches of David’s city" (22:9), "You counted the houses of Jerusalem" (22:10). In Hebrew burden is massa' (tap burden) and vision is chizzayon (tap vision). The chapter opens with a question: "What ails you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops?" (22:1). The city is "full of shouting, a tumultuous city, a joyous town" (22:2), yet "your slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle" (22:2), and "All your rulers fled away together" (22:3). The chapter names no king of its own day and gives no date, and these notes add none.

Isaiah 22:22→leads toRevelation 3:7

Of "my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah" (Isaiah 22:20) the LORD says, "I will lay the key of David’s house on his shoulder. He will open, and no one will shut. He will shut, and no one will open" (Isaiah 22:22). Revelation is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:1). John heard a voice say, "What you see, write in a book and send to the seven assemblies" (Revelation 1:11), Philadelphia among them, and he turned and saw "one like a son of man" (Revelation 1:13), who said, "I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever" (Revelation 1:18). For the assembly in Philadelphia he says, "He who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says these things" (Revelation 3:7), and "behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut" (Revelation 3:8). Revelation doesn't name Isaiah or Eliakim, and its words are close to 22:22's but not the same ("the key of David", not "the key of David’s house"), so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear in Revelation 3:7 the words of Isaiah 22:22 taken up for the authority of the risen Jesus, with nothing said of Eliakim beyond his own day. Others read Revelation 3:7 on its own, of the risen Jesus who also says, "I have the keys of Death and of Hades" (Revelation 1:18), and read Isaiah 22:22 of Eliakim only. Neither reading makes Eliakim a picture of Jesus, and these notes pick neither.

מַפְתֵּחַmafteachsay maf-TAY-akh

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "key (opening instrument)". Strong's: "from 6605; an opener, i.e. a key", from patach, open. "I will lay the key of David’s house on his shoulder. He will open, and no one will shut. He will shut, and no one will open" (22:22). The Hebrew Bible has the word twice. The other is in Judges, when Eglon's servants found the doors of the upper room locked (Judges 3:24): "they took the key and opened them" (Judges 3:25). In both verses key stands with the verb open, patach.