Given that Isaiah’s holistic literary structures such as his Seven-Part Structure transform the entire Book of Isaiah into an end-time scenario, Isaiah’s Shebna–Eliakim passage should be interpreted in that light. It should not be isolated from the rest of Isaiah’s prophecies or used as a prooftext for advocating a modern agenda that is not there.
Eliakim is but one of many ancient figures—including Abraham, Moses, David, Cyrus, and others we have discussed—whom Isaiah draws on as types to depict the roles and attributes of God’s end-time servant David. That servant is not Jesus but one who, as we see in this passage, inherits ancient David’s posterity.
Like Eliakim, God’s “servant”—a word link—supplants a vainglorious steward: “Thus said my Lord, Jehovah of Hosts: Go and see that steward, Shebna, overseer of the palace. [Say to him,] What are you up to? Who do you think you are, that you have hewn yourself a tomb here, [like] those who hew their sepulchers up high, carving out graves for themselves in the rock?
“Jehovah will hurl you away as an athlete hurls a missile; he will make you soar like a dart. He will bind you tightly about and send you spinning like a top into an open country. There shall you die, and your [in]glorious conveyance there shall be a disgrace to your master’s house. I will thrust you out of office; you will be expelled from your post” (Isaiah 22:15–19).
Replacing Shebna in his role as a “father” or proxy savior to his people, Eliakim receives the sealing power: “In that day I will commission my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah: I will clothe him with your robe and bind your girdle on him; I will appoint him your jurisdiction. And he will be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. I will invest him with the keys of the house of David: when he opens none shall shut, when he shuts none shall open. I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place, and he will be a throne of glory to the house of his father.
“Upon him shall be hung all the glory of his father’s house: his descendants and posterity, including all the lesser vessels, from ordinary bowls to the most common containers. In that day, says Jehovah of Hosts, the nail that was fastened in a sure place shall be removed. It shall be dislodged and fall, and the burden hanging on it cut off. Jehovah has spoken it” (Isaiah 22:20–25). In this instance, the “vessels,” “bowls,” and “containers, symbolize those who hang or are dependent on their proxy savior for deliverance in God’s Day of Judgment that is coming upon the world.
Note also the symbolic terminology of the “nail in a sure place”—temple imagery that speaks to the savior role of one who acts in the role of a “father” to others. As Jacob describes it, so was Nephi to his people: “Unto whom ye look as a king or a protector, and on whom ye depend for safety” (2 Nephi 6:2). So was the brother of Jared, who “did call upon the name of the Lord for his brethren who were with him” (Ether 2:15). Nephi the son of Helaman received the sealing power for essentially the same reason (Helaman 10:4–11).
Jesus predicts this same scenario that will occur at the time of his second coming: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you that he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
“But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:44–51).
