Reflections on Isaiah 22

Isaiah 22 (Contemporary English Version)
1. This is a message about Vision Valley: Why are you celebrating on the flat roofs of your houses?
   
2. Your city is filled with noisy shouts. Those who lie drunk in your streets were not killed in battle.
   
3. Your leaders ran away, but they were captured without a fight. No matter how far they ran, they were found and caught.
   
4. Then I said, "Leave me alone! Let me cry bitter tears. My people have been destroyed, so don't try to comfort me."
   
5. The LORD All-Powerful had chosen a time for noisy shouts and confusion to fill Vision Valley, and for everyone to beg the mountains for help.
   
6. The people of Elam and Kir attacked with chariots and carried shields.
   
7. Your most beautiful valleys were covered with chariots; your cities were surrounded by cavalry troops.
   
8. Judah was left defenseless. At that time you trusted in the weapons you had stored in Forest Palace.
   
9. You saw the holes in the outer wall of Jerusalem, and you brought water from the lower pool.
   
10. You counted the houses in Jerusalem and tore down some of them, so you could get stones to repair the city wall.
    
11. Then you built a large tank between the walls to store the water. But you refused to trust the God who planned this long ago and made it happen.
    
12. When all of this happened, the LORD All-Powerful told you to weep and mourn, to shave your heads, and wear sackcloth.
    
13. But instead, you celebrated by feasting on beef and lamb and by drinking wine, because you said, "Let's eat and drink! Tomorrow we may die."
    
14. The LORD All-Powerful has spoken to me this solemn promise: "I won't forgive them for this, not as long as they live."
    
15. The LORD All-Powerful is sending you with this message for Shebna, the prime minister:
    
16. Shebna, what gives you the right to have a tomb carved out of rock in this burial place of royalty? None of your relatives are buried here.
    
17. You may be powerful, but the LORD is about to snatch you up and throw you away.
    
18. He will roll you into a ball and throw you into a wide open country, where you will die and your chariots will be destroyed. You're a disgrace to those you serve.
    
19. The LORD is going to take away your job!
    
20. He will give your official robes and your authority to his servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah. Eliakim will be like a father to the people of Jerusalem and to the royal family of Judah.
    
21. (SEE 22:20)
    
22. The LORD will put him in charge of the key that belongs to King David's family. No one will be able to unlock what he locks, and no one will be able to lock what he unlocks.
    
23. The LORD will make him as firm in his position as a tent peg hammered in the ground, and Eliakim will bring honor to his family.
    
24. His children and relatives will be supported by him, like pans hanging from a peg on the wall.
    
25. That peg is fastened firmly now, but someday it will be shaken loose and fall down. Then everything that was hanging on it will be destroyed. This is what the LORD All-Powerful has promised.

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The oracle of this chapter is against Jerusalem in Judah. The picture we see here of Judah is not one of a people who have a special relationship with God, but of one who are godless just as the other nations around them. In their most desperate hour, when death and destruction are evident, they do not even address God. Not even to cry out to Him in anger. Instead, they party. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" they say. (22:13)

With the Assryian army gathered outside the walls of Jerusalem, the people went up on their rooftops to view the enemy. As they looked out across the Kidron valley they saw it full of chariots and there were horsemen positioned at the gates. Their deaths were inevitable. But they didn't turn to the Lord. As a result, the defenses the Lord might have provided were removed. They looked to their own resources to defend them so it was these resources upon which they would have to rely. Not those of the Lord. They inspected breaches in the wall, carried in water, counted houses that could be used to fortify the wall, and made a reservoir between the walls for the waters of the lower pool, but they "did not look to the One who made it." (22:11) That is, the One who made the pool. Here is the age-old practice of depending on creation but not on the creator.  God was looking for the Jerusalemites to shave their heads and put on sackcloth and to weep and wail over their sins and turn back to Him. Instead, there was revelry - eating and drinking and merriment. Therefore, God determined He would not wipe out this sin. Any hope of deliverance was gone at that point.

Verses 15-25 evidently picture the situation with Jerusalem's leaders using one person, Shebna, as an example. Even with death looming over him, this leader was trying to make a name for himself, trying to carve out a prominent grave site for himself that would supposedly cause his name to live on. If he were trying to position himself prominently in death we can safely assume he did the same in life. A leader who was more concerned for his own prominence than for the people over which he had jurisdiction. But rather than the prominent grave site, Shebna would have no gravesite at all. God was going to demote him from his position of leadership and he would die in a foreign land with no permanent resting place. In his place God would place Eliakim, a godly man who would be like a father to the people. But eventually all of them, even the godly, would be taken away in captivity.