The Key of the House of David
15 The Lord, Yahweh of Armies says, “Go, get yourself to this treasurer, even to Shebna, who is over the house, and say, 16 ‘What are you doing here? Who has you here, that you have dug out a tomb here?’ Cutting himself out a tomb on high, chiseling a habitation for himself in the rock!” 17 Behold, Yahweh will overcome you and hurl you away violently. Yes, he will grasp you firmly. 18 He will surely wind you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a large country. There you will die, and there the chariots of your glory will be, you disgrace of your lord’s house. 19 I will thrust you from your office. You will be pulled down from your station. 20 It will happen in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, 21 and I will clothe him with your robe, and strengthen him with your belt. I will commit your government into his hand; and he will be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. 22 I will lay the key of David’s house on his shoulder. He will open, and no one will shut. He will shut, and no one will open. 23 I will fasten him like a nail in a sure place. He will be for a throne of glory to his father’s house. 24 They will hang on him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, every small vessel, from the cups even to all the pitchers. 25 “In that day,” says Yahweh of Armies, “the nail that was fastened in a sure place will give way. It will be cut down and fall. The burden that was on it will be cut off, for Yahweh has spoken it.”
A senior official is sacked over the tomb he was building himself, and his successor is given a key that turns up again in Revelation.
The Lord, Yahweh of Armies says, “Go, get yourself to this treasurer, even to Shebna, who is over the house, and say,
The only oracle in the book addressed to a named individual who is not a king. Shebna was the palace administrator, the highest office under the throne, and the message is a dismissal.
‘What are you doing here? Who has you here, that you have dug out a tomb here?’ Cutting himself out a tomb on high, chiseling a habitation for himself in the rock!”
The charge is a building project — his own tomb, cut high in the rock face where the great families were buried. Three questions, and the middle one is the sharp one: who has you here. He is not from Jerusalem, has no ancestral claim to a grave among its aristocracy, and is quarrying himself one.
The word for the tomb is habitation, which is what a man calls the place he expects to stay.
17 Behold, Yahweh will overcome you and hurl you away violently. Yes, he will grasp you firmly. 18 He will surely wind you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a large country. There you will die, and there the chariots of your glory will be, you disgrace of your lord’s house.
The punishment answers the crime exactly. A man who arranged a permanent address is wound up and thrown, and the verb is the one for a sling. There you will die, and there the chariots of your glory will be — the tomb in the rock stays empty.
I will thrust you from your office. You will be pulled down from your station.
20 It will happen in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, 21 and I will clothe him with your robe, and strengthen him with your belt. I will commit your government into his hand; and he will be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.
The successor is installed in the same verse, wearing the same clothes, and the title given him is father — which is what the office was for and what Shebna had not been.
I will lay the key of David’s house on his shoulder. He will open, and no one will shut. He will shut, and no one will open.
The key of a great house was a substantial piece of metal carried on the shoulder, and it is the badge of the office. Whoever holds it controls access, and the formula of opening and shutting states that the authority is not shared.
The risen Christ uses this sentence of himself, word for word, in the letter to Philadelphia: he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut Revelation 3:7. What was said of a palace steward in Jerusalem is taken up as a title.
I will fasten him like a nail in a sure place. He will be for a throne of glory to his father’s house.
They will hang on him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, every small vessel, from the cups even to all the pitchers.
And then the oracle turns. Everything gets hung on the peg — the whole extended family, and every last utensil.
“In that day,” says Yahweh of Armies, “the nail that was fastened in a sure place will give way. It will be cut down and fall. The burden that was on it will be cut off, for Yahweh has spoken it.”
Eliakim too. A peg driven into a wall will hold a great deal and not everything, and the passage ends by saying that the man who replaced Shebna would be brought down by what was hung on him. No human holder of the key lasts.
settled What this mark means