The burden of the valley of vision. What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops?
Isaiah 22:1-14.-PROPHECY AS TO AN ATTACK ON JERUSALEM: that by Sennacherib, in the 14th year of Hezekiah; Isaiah 22:8-11, the preparations for defense and securing of water exactly answer to those in 2 Chronicles 32:4-5; 2 Chronicles 32:30. "Shebna," too (Isaiah 22:15), was scribe at this time (Isaiah 36:3) (Maurer). The language of Isaiah 22:12-14, as to the infidelity and consequent utter ruin of the Jews, seems more fully to foreshadow the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar in Zedekiah's reign, and cannot be restricted to Hezekiah's time (Lowth.)
The burden of the valley of vision - i:e., the weighty prophecy respecting the valley of visions-namely, Jerusalem, the seat of divine revelations and visions, 'the nursery of prophets' (Jerome). Isaiah 2:3; Isaiah 29:1; Ezekiel 23:4, margin; Luke 13:33. It lay in a "valley" surrounded by hills higher than Zion and Moriah (Psalms 125:2; Jeremiah 21:13).
What aileth thee - the people of Jerusalem personified.
Gone up to the house-tops? Panic struck, they went up on the flat balustraded roofs to look forth and see whether the enemy is near, and partly to defend themselves from the roofs, (Judges 9:51, etc.)