Isaiah 22:4-6 - Homiletics

Isaiah weeping for the daughter of his people a type of Christ lamenting over Jerusalem.

Isaiah was in many respects a type of Christ. His name, which sight ties "Salvation of Jehovah," is a near equivalent of "Jesus," which means "Jehovah is Savior." Tradition says that he was of royal lineage, like Jesus. The sphere of his teaching was in the main Jerusalem, where our Lord's principal discourses were delivered. He reproved sin, yet pitied the sinner, like Jesus (see Homiletics on Isaiah 15:5 ). He was, like Jesus, martyred at Jerusalem. We may, therefore, without impropriety, regard the "bitter weeping" of verse 4 as in some respect the counterpart of our Lord's lament on the day of his triumphal entry into the city, when he beheld it from the brow of Olivet. They were alike in several respects.

I. BOTH WERE CAUSED BY PROPHETIC VISION OF THE HORRORS OF A SIEGE . In Isaiah's time the siege had begun. The enemy was investing the place (verse 7). But his tears flowed on account of the future "spoiling" of his people on that "day of trouble and treading down and perplexity;" when there was to be "breaking down of walls and crying to the mountains" (verse 5), and Elam was to "bear the quiver," and Kir to "uncover the shield." Jesus wept because the days were coming upon Jerusalem, when "her enemies would cast a trench about her, and compass her round, and keep her in on every side, "and at last" lay her even with the ground, and her children within her" ( Luke 19:43 , Luke 19:44 ). In the one case Rome was the enemy, in the other Assyria, both equally truculent. In the one case final destruction impended; in the other a punishment far short of final destruction, but still a very severe punishment. In both cases grievous sins had provoked the catastrophe, yet the thought of these did not prevent the tears from being shed on account of it.

II. BOTH DERIVED THEIR BITTERNESS FROM THE FACT THAT THE SUFFERER WAS OF KIN TO THE MOURNER . "I will weep," said Isaiah, "because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people ." The woes of other peoples shocked and distressed him to some extent ( Isaiah 15:5 ; Isaiah 16:9-11 ; Isaiah 21:3 , Isaiah 21:4 ); but not as those of his own nation, his "kinsmen according to the flesh." And so it was with Jesus. Patriotism moved the spirits of both mourners, and rendered their grief especially poignant.

III. BOTH WERE AGGRAVATED BY THE THOUGHT THAT THE SUFFERING WAS UNEXPECTED . Isaiah tells us that at Sennacherib's siege no preparations had been made to resist the foe, until the choice valleys were full of troops, and the horsemen set in array at the gates (verses 7-10). Our Lord gives it as the climax of the horrors at the siege by Titus, that Jerusalem had not "known the day of her visitation" ( Luke 19:44 ). Jerusalem was at the time expecting the Messiah, who would enable them to cast off the Roman yoke. She did not know that her Messiah had come. Just when she was looking for a glorious deliverance, there came a crushing disaster. So Hezekiah was probably looking for victory by the help of Egypt, when he had to make the most abject submission—to strip the temple in order to satisfy the cravings of the conqueror for "spoil," and to see a large part of his people carried into captivity.