Panel essay · Isaiah 13–35 · September 21–27, 2026 · Six outlooks · the Parry method
Written by an AI persona applying Donald W. Parry's six-outlooks framework. Professor Parry did not write, review, or endorse this essay, and no words are attributed to him that are not cited to a published source.
The passage this week is two verses from the oracle against Jerusalem's royal steward:
And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house. (Isaiah 22:22–23)
The lesson lists these verses among passages that point to the Savior. They make a good test case for a method, because they can't be read well at only one level. They name a real official in a real crisis. They are quoted in Revelation about Christ. Latter-day Saints have their own vocabulary of keys. And two verses later the text does something awkward that any honest reading has to deal with: the nail comes out (22:25).
The method comes from Donald W. Parry, professor of Hebrew Bible at BYU and a member of the international team that translated the Dead Sea Scrolls. In "Ways to Read Isaiah: Six Outlooks," a chapter in his Search Diligently the Words of Isaiah, Parry sets out six ways a reader can approach Isaiah. They are the historical "near view," prophecy as a "distant view," dual or multiple fulfillment, likening, personal reading, and reading for doctrine. Parry recommends starting with the near view. This essay applies his framework to one passage. The readings below are mine, not his, and he does not discuss Isaiah 22 in that chapter.
Isaiah 22 opens with "the burden of the valley of vision" (22:1). Jerusalem is celebrating on its housetops while the army is shamed and the enemy gathers. The city prepares for siege in practical ways. It checks the armory in "the house of the forest" (22:8). It collects "the waters of the lower pool" (22:9). It tears down houses "to fortify the wall" (22:10) and cuts "a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool" (22:11). Many readers connect this to Hezekiah's water projects (2 Kings 20:20). Isaiah's charge is not that the engineering was wrong. His charge is about where the city looked: "ye have not looked unto the maker thereof" (22:11).
Then the oracle turns to one man. Shebna is "this treasurer... which is over the house" (22:15). That phrase was the formal title of the royal steward, the highest official of the palace. Isaiah's complaint against him is specific. "What hast thou here... that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here... on high" (22:16)? While the city was in danger, the steward was building himself a monument.
Archaeology gives this a physical setting. In 1870 Charles Clermont-Ganneau found a lintel in the village of Silwan, across the Kidron Valley from the City of David. Nahman Avigad deciphered it in 1953. It marks the tomb of "[...]yahu who is over the house" and states that there is no silver or gold inside. Some scholars have suggested that the missing name is Shebnayahu, the full form of Shebna. Avigad himself called that identification "highly conjectural," and the name is broken away. What the lintel does establish is that officials with this exact title cut rock tombs on that hillside in the late Iron Age. Isaiah's image of a man carving "an habitation for himself in a rock" (22:16) fits that landscape.
Eliakim replaces Shebna. The Lord will "clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle" (22:21). The robe and sash are the insignia of the office, moved from one man to the other. Eliakim will be "a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem." The key "upon his shoulder" (22:22) is the palace key. Whoever held it controlled who could enter the king's house and who could not. The "nail" (Hebrew yated) is a peg driven into a wall to hold hanging vessels (22:24). The word can also mean a tent peg (Judges 4:21), but the translators' handbook by Ogden and Sterk concludes from 22:25 that a wall peg is meant.
History partly confirms the oracle. When the Assyrian Rab-shakeh stands outside Jerusalem, it is "Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the household" who goes out to meet him, and with him is "Shebna the scribe" (2 Kings 18:18, 37). Shebna had been demoted, but he had not yet been exiled.
The near view also has to include 22:24–25. The whole family, "the offspring and the issue," hangs on Eliakim like cups and flagons on one peg. Then "shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall." Ogden and Sterk's handbook reads the falling peg as Eliakim himself: "Like Shebna, Eliakim will lose his position." On that reading, Isaiah installs a new steward and in the same oracle foresees that his relatives will pull him down. That is the plainest near-view reading, and it should be stated plainly.
Parry's second outlook reads Isaiah as speaking to events far beyond his own time. For this passage the New Testament has already done that. The risen Christ tells the church in Philadelphia:
These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth. (Revelation 3:7)
This is not a vague echo. John uses Isaiah's exact open/shut formula and gives it to Christ as the holder of the Davidic key. The next verse continues the image: "I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it" (Revelation 3:8). The steward's key becomes the key of the Messiah. The office that Eliakim held on the king's behalf now belongs to the King's Son in his own right.
Isaiah's wording invites this reading in one small way. "Shoulder" in 22:22 (shikmo, "his shoulder") is the same word used in the messianic oracle of 9:6, "the government shall be upon his shoulder." The Hebrew words translated "government" differ in the two passages (memshalah in 22:21, misrah in 9:6).
Parry's third outlook is the one this passage needs most. He cites Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's observation that many of Isaiah's prophecies can be fulfilled in more than one way. He discusses what has been called a "layer-cake" model, in which one prophecy can be fulfilled in Isaiah's day, in the meridian of time, and in the last days. Isaiah 22 fits that model. Eliakim really did take Shebna's office. And John really did read the key as Christ's.
The difficulty is the peg that falls. If Eliakim is a type of Christ, what does the removal of the nail mean? Readers have answered in at least three ways, two of them from Latter-day Saint writers, and all three deserve a hearing.
Terry B. Ball, writing in Jesus Christ: Son of God, Savior, reads the nail as Christ fastened to the cross, with the "glory of his father's house" hanging on him. On this reading, the "burden" cut off in 22:25 is the pain and sin of the Father's children that Christ carried. Spencer Kraus reports that Elder Holland, in A Witness for His Names, reads the passage the same way, with the nail's removal pointing to the completion of the Atonement and the removal of Christ's body from the cross. In this reading the fall is fulfillment, not failure.
Kraus himself proposes something different in the Interpreter journal. He translates 22:25 as a condition, "should the nail... be removed," which makes the verse a covenant curse that depends on unfaithfulness rather than a flat prediction. He also connects the "nail in a sure place" to temple language, especially Ezra 9:8, where the returned exiles thank God "to give us a nail in his holy place."
The third reading is the near-view one given above: Eliakim fell. It deserves weight because it is the most natural reading of the Hebrew in its setting. Taking dual fulfillment seriously does not mean choosing whichever layer is easiest. It means keeping the layers distinct. Eliakim was a peg that could slip. Revelation 3:7 speaks of a key-holder whose opening "no man" can undo. The typology may be strongest where the type fails and the antitype does not.
Nephi "did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning" (1 Nephi 19:23). Parry's fourth outlook follows that instruction. It helps to compare it with the Dead Sea Scrolls, a field Parry has worked in since 1994. The Qumran community wrote pesharim, commentaries on Isaiah, Habakkuk, and other prophets, including several on Isaiah. These commentaries quote a verse and then explain it as a coded reference to the community's own history. Likening resembles pesher in applying the ancient text to present people. It differs in one important way. Pesher claimed that the application was the hidden meaning of the text. Likening applies the text to us openly, without claiming that Isaiah had us in mind.
Likened, the Shebna–Eliakim contrast becomes a question for anyone who holds a trust. Shebna treated his office as a way to build a monument to himself. Eliakim's charge was to be "a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem." For Latter-day Saints the word key adds a further level. Jesus gives Peter "the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 16:19), with the language of binding and loosing rather than opening and shutting. Priesthood keys are given again in modern revelation (Doctrine and Covenants 110:16). Isaiah 22 is an ancient example of how keys work. The keys are the king's, not the steward's. They come with insignia that can be taken away. And the person who holds them is expected to act as a father to those he serves, not to build a memorial to himself.
Verse 24 also applies to ordinary life. Everything the family had, "all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons," hung on one peg until the peg gave way. Anyone who has become the one person an organization, a ward, or a family depends on will recognize that picture.
Parry's fifth outlook is reading for comfort, guidance, or personal revelation. He gives examples such as turning to Isaiah 40:31 when a reader needs strength. The meaning a reader receives this way may have little to do with the passage's original setting. That is allowed, as long as the reader does not confuse it with the historical meaning.
Isaiah 22:22–23 works this way for many readers. A person facing a door that seems permanently closed, whether a relationship, an opportunity, or a return to faith, may read "he shall open, and none shall shut" as a direct word. Someone who feels uprooted may hold on to "a nail in a sure place" as a promise of being fixed somewhere. Nothing in the steward oracle intends that, and the reader should know it. But the personal outlook is not exegesis and does not claim to be. It is one of the ways scripture has always been used by the people who read it.
Parry's sixth outlook asks what gospel truths a passage teaches. Here the doctrine rests on one Hebrew word. "Sure" in "a sure place" is neʼeman, from the root ʼmn, which gives Hebrew its words for firmness, faithfulness, and belief, and gives English the word amen. Isaiah uses this root at key points. To Ahaz he said, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established" (7:9). This is a pun in Hebrew: taʼaminu and teʼamenu are two forms of the same verb. Later in this week's reading the Lord lays in Zion "a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation," and "he that believeth (hammaʼamin) shall not make haste" (28:16).
Read with those verses, 22:23–25 teaches a doctrine about where security comes from. A peg is only as sure as the wall it is driven into and the faithfulness of the one it represents. Jerusalem trusted its walls and water tunnels and "looked not unto the maker thereof" (22:11). Shebna trusted a rock-cut tomb. Eliakim's family trusted Eliakim. Each of these was a peg, and each could come loose. Only one thing in Isaiah is promised never to be pulled up. Zion is "a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed" (33:20). "Stakes" there is the same word, yated.
The New Testament brings these threads together. The one who "hath the key of David" in Revelation 3:7 promises, a few verses later, that whoever overcomes will be made "a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out" (3:12). Zechariah had already put the corner and the nail together: "Out of him came forth the corner, out of him the nail" (Zechariah 10:4). The doctrine in 22:22–23 is not that an office holder is permanent. It is that authority is delegated ("I will lay," "I will fasten"), that it is held on behalf of others ("a father to the inhabitants"), and that the only fastening that cannot fail is the one made by the Lord who fastens. When a peg falls, as in 22:25, that failure shows what a sure place actually is.