Snap on the Sackcloth
- This chapter begins with an oracle about the "valley of vision."
- Isaiah asks why people have gone onto on all the roofs and high places in town acting tumultuously and excited.
- He says it doesn't make sense, since none of their soldiers or leaders died. They just got captured.
- Isaiah personally just wants some time alone to cry.
- In the valley of vision, God's has a time of trampling and confusion and walls getting knocked down.
- Elam and Kir were the military forces instigating this.
- Isaiah says that people helped knock down houses to build walls and defend against these armies, but they didn't turn towards the person who planned it long ago and who helped them do all this.
- They should've humiliated themselves and worn sackcloth and mourned. But instead they threw a big party and ate and drank.
- God says he won't forgive them for this until they die.
Stewing Up the Steward
- God tells the people to go ask a steward named Shebna why he's taken over the house he's in and set up a place to live.
- They're supposed to tell him that God's about to chuck him out and leave him in a foreign land, since he's disgraced his master's house.
- Instead, God will appoint some dude named Eliakim to take his place. He'll be able to open and close the door of the House of David whenever he wants to.
- For a while, he'll be like a secure peg that God can hang glory and stuff on. But eventually the peg's going to break, because God wants it that way.