Isaiah 22:25 - Exposition

SEQUEL OF THE PROPHECY CONCERNING ELIAKIM . This verse has been truly called "an enigma" (Kay). It is impossible to understand it of Shebna. "The nail that was fastened in a sure place" can only refer to the nail said to have been so fastened in Isaiah 22:23 . Are we, then, to understand that Eliakim too will experience a reverse of fortune? But then all the force of the contrast between him and Shebna would be gone. Is it not possible that the prophet, seeing in Eliakim a type of the Messiah, and becoming more and more Messianic in his utterances, has ended by forgetting the type altogether, and being absorbed in the thought of the antitype? He, the nail, so surely fixed in his eternal place, would nevertheless be "removed" for a time, and then "he cut down and fall" (comp. Isaiah 52:14 ; Isaiah 53:8 ). At the same time would be "cut off" the burden which Messiah bore ( Isaiah 53:12 , "He bare the sin of many").