Sunday Sermonette: Op-ed page

Isaiah 22 is uses a lot of elaborate and obscure language, but it's not actually a prophecy. It's a report and commentary on the news. King Hezekiah has witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria, and Jerusalem is under siege. Isaiah wants the palace administrator Shebna deposed, and replaced by Eliakim. That's it. This has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the end times or any of that garbage.

22 A prophecy against the Valley of Vision:

What troubles you now,
    that you have all gone up on the roofs,
² you town so full of commotion,
    you city of tumult and revelry?
Your slain were not killed by the sword,
    nor did they die in battle.
³ All your leaders have fled together;
    they have been captured without using the bow.
All you who were caught were taken prisoner together,
    having fled while the enemy was still far away.
⁴ Therefore I said, “Turn away from me;
    let me weep bitterly.
Do not try to console me
    over the destruction of my people.”

⁵ The Lord, the Lord Almighty, has a day
    of tumult and trampling and terror
    in the Valley of Vision,
a day of battering down walls
    and of crying out to the mountains.
⁶ Elam takes up the quiver,
    with her charioteers and horses;
    Kir uncovers the shield.
⁷ Your choicest valleys are full of chariots,
    and horsemen are posted at the city gates.

⁸ The Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah,
    and you looked in that day
    to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest.
⁹ You saw that the walls of the City of David
    were broken through in many places;
you stored up water
    in the Lower Pool.
¹⁰ You counted the buildings in Jerusalem
    and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.
¹¹ You built a reservoir between the two walls
    for the water of the Old Pool,
but you did not look to the One who made it,
    or have regard for the One who planned it long ago.

¹² The Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
    to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
¹³ But see, there is joy and revelry,
    slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
    eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
    “for tomorrow we die!”

¹⁴ The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: “Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

¹⁵ This is what the Lord, the Lord Almighty, says:

“Go, say to this steward,
    to Shebna the palace administrator:
¹⁶ What are you doing here and who gave you permission
    to cut out a grave for yourself here,
hewing your grave on the height
    and chiseling your resting place in the rock?

¹⁷ “Beware, the Lord is about to take firm hold of you
    and hurl you away, you mighty man.
¹⁸ He will roll you up tightly like a ball
    and throw you into a large country.
There you will die
    and there the chariots you were so proud of
    will become a disgrace to your master’s house.
¹⁹ I will depose you from your office,
    and you will be ousted from your position.

²⁰ “In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. ²¹ I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah. ²² I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. ²³ I will drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will become a seat^[a] of honor for the house of his father. ²⁴ All the glory of his family will hang on him: its offspring and offshoots—all its lesser vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.

²⁵ “In that day,” declares the Lord Almighty, “the peg driven into the firm place will give way; it will be sheared off and will fall, and the load hanging on it will be cut down.” The Lord has spoken.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 22:23 Or throne