Synchronous holistic structures in the Book of Isaiah allow us to read Isaiah’s writings in their entirety as foreshadowing an endtime scenario. In that case, the events that occurred in Isaiah’s day act as an allegory of the endtime. So it is with “my servant Eliakim,” who displaces Shebna, another servant who entertains ideas of grandeur. God invests Eliakim with the “keys of the house of David: when he opens none shall shut, when he shuts none shall open.” This sealing power enables Eliakim to act as a “father” or savior to God’s people. God “fastens him as a nail in a sure place, and he will be a throne of glory to the house of his Father” (Isaiah 22:20–24).
Upon that nail, moreover, hang “vessels” large and small—“his descendants and posterity”—who depend on him for safety (Isaiah 22:24). God spares these and other “vessels” from destruction when the Assyrian archtyrant commences his work of world genocide (Isaiah 52:11). Meanwhile, the first nail in a sure place—the servant’s vainglorious contemporary—is released from office, and those who depend on him are “cut off” (Isaiah 22:19, 25). That scenario has a type in David’s replacing Saul and is identical with one Jesus predicts, in which a “faithful and wise servant” replaces an “evil servant” before Jesus’ second coming (Matthew 24:44–51).
