Isaiah 22:24-25

If Isaiah 22:24 stood alone it might be barely possible to interpret it in a sense favourable to Eliakim. But taken in connexion with Isaiah 22:25 it seems to convey an imputation of the unworthy exercise of patronage on his part, a filling of important offices with worthless relatives and dependents. Many commentators, it is true, hold that Isaiah 22:25 refers back to the fall of Shebna, but this is quite arbitrary. Shebna is notlikened to a "nail in a sure place" and it is clearly implied that he had no "father's house" in Jerusalem (Isaiah 22:16). It is hardly credible that Isaiah should have uttered such a threat along with the promises in Isaiah 22:20; but the last two verses may be an appendix written later, when abuses of trust in Eliakim's family had begun to display themselves.