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Shebna and Eliakim

15 Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts:
    Up, go to that official,
    Shebna,[a] master of the palace,
16 [b]“What have you here? Whom have you here,
    that you have hewn for yourself a tomb here,
Hewing a tomb on high,
    carving a resting place in the rock?”
17 The Lord shall hurl you down headlong, mortal man!
    He shall grip you firmly,
18 And roll you up and toss you like a ball
    into a broad land.
There you will die, there with the chariots you glory in,
    you disgrace to your master’s house!
19 I will thrust you from your office
    and pull you down from your station.
20 On that day I will summon my servant
    Eliakim,[c] son of Hilkiah;(A)
21 I will clothe him with your robe,
    gird him with your sash,
    confer on him your authority.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
    and to the house of Judah.(B)
22 I will place the key[d] of the House of David on his shoulder;
    what he opens, no one will shut,
    what he shuts, no one will open.(C)
23 I will fix him as a peg in a firm place,
    a seat of honor for his ancestral house;
24 On him shall hang all the glory of his ancestral house:[e]
    descendants and offspring,
    all the little dishes, from bowls to jugs.

25 On that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg fixed in a firm place shall give way, break off and fall, and the weight that hung on it shall be done away with; for the Lord has spoken.

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Footnotes

  1. 22:15 Shebna: by the time of the siege of Jerusalem in 36:3, Shebna, the scribe, no longer held the office of master of the palace.
  2. 22:16 What is probably Shebna’s inscribed tomb has been discovered in the village of Silwan on the eastern slope of Jerusalem.
  3. 22:20 Eliakim: by the time of the events described in 36:3, Eliakim had replaced Shebna as master of the palace.
  4. 22:22 Key: symbol of authority; cf. Mt 16:19; Rev 3:7.
  5. 22:24–25 Apparently Eliakim proved to be a disappointment, so an oracle of judgment was added to the originally positive oracle to Eliakim.