The Key · The Symbolism of Scripture
The Key
A key is not power. It is delegated authority over a door somebody else built — which is why every key in Scripture is given, transferred, or taken away, and why the only one never handed to anyone is the one over death.
What It Stands For
— authority over a door you did not buildAncient keys were not pocket objects. A temple or palace key was a substantial piece of wood or bronze, large enough to be carried openly on the shoulder — which is precisely the detail Isaiah uses. Carrying it was a public statement, and that is the symbol’s whole content: everyone can see who has been trusted with the door.
- EliakimIsaiah 22:22The house of David — the royal household and its access.A steward, given a key another man had just lost.
- Peter, and the disciplesMatthew 16:19The kingdom of heaven.Given, not held by right. What that giving means has its own study.
- The lawyers — and then nobodyLuke 11:52Knowledge, which is what opens heaven.The one place a key is taken away rather than given.
- The risen ChristRevelation 1:18Death and Hades.Not delegated to anyone, anywhere in Scripture.
- The risen ChristRevelation 3:7The key of David — Isaiah 22:22 quoted about Himself.He opens and no man shuts.
- An angel, given itRevelation 9:1 · 20:1The bottomless pit.Given both times, in opposite directions: once to open it, once to shut it.
The key - The government, the power of opening and shutting, of letting men into it, or putting them out of it, whereof a key is a fit emblem. Shoulder - He mentions the shoulder rather than the hand, in which keys are commonly carried, from some ceremony then in use, of carrying a key upon the shoulder of the officer of state.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Wesleyan
Isaiah 22:22
Wesley and Adam Clarkeboth take the shoulder as a real custom of office rather than a figure of speech. Clarke gathers parallel evidence from Greek sources, where a temple’s key-bearer is a named official: And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder - As the robe and the baldric, mentioned in the preceding verse, were the ensigns of power and authority, so likewise was the key the mark of office, either sacred or civil.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
— eight stops — nearly all of them marked, because this symbol is almost entirely quotedSix of eight stops are marked. That is unusually high, and it is a fact about the symbol rather than a claim of this page: the key is a small image that the New Testament picks up explicitly, quotes, and applies out loud.
On that day I will summon My servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and tie your sash around him. I will put your authority in his hand, and he will be a father to the dwellers of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
One steward is removed and another installed, and the transfer is shown by a key laid on a shoulder. This is the passage every later key text is standing on.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Keys of the kingdom, given to Peter. What exactly is given, and to whom, is one of the most argued questions in Christian history — and it has its own study.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.
The charge: shutting up the kingdom in front of people — neither going in themselves nor letting others through.
Woe to you experts in the law! For you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”
And the sharper version of the same charge: they took away the key of knowledge. Not misused it — removed it.
the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.
The risen Christ says He holds the keys of death and Hades — and the claim rests on the clause just before it: I was dead, and behold, I am alive.
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open.
He quotes Isaiah 22:22 about Himself, almost word for word, to a small church with little strength.
Then the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and it was given the key to the pit of the Abyss.
The key of the bottomless pit is given to a fallen star. Given — the word is used deliberately, and it is used again in chapter 20.
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. After that, he must be released for a brief period of time.
The last key in the Bible locks something. An angel comes down holding it, and the pit is shut with the dragon inside.
Where It Points
— Isaiah 22:22, quoted about HimselfI will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.Spoken about Eliakim, a palace steward in Hezekiah's Jerusalem.
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open.Spoken by the risen Christ, about Himself, seven hundred years later.
Put side by side, the two verses are almost the same sentence. That is the argument of this page and it requires no assembly: the New Testament did the work, and it did it in the mouth of the One making the claim.
But the phrase is rather figurative for sustaining the government on one's shoulders. Eliakim, as his name implies, is here plainly a type of the God-man Christ, the son of "David," of whom Isaiah (Isa 9:6) uses the same language as the former clause of this verse.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Isaiah 22:22
Our Lord Jesus describes his own power as Mediator by an allusion to this ( Rev. iii. 7 ), that he has the key of David, wherewith he opens and no man shuts, he shuts and no man opens. His power in the kingdom of heaven, and in the ordering of all the affairs of that kingdom, is absolute, irresistible, and uncontrollable.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Isaiah 22:22
And then the claim nobody else in Scripture makes. Two chapters before the key of David, the same speaker says He holds the keys of death and Hades — and gives His grounds in the previous clause.
the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.The order matters: I was dead — I am alive — I have the keys. The authority is argued from the experience.
And I have the keys of death and Hades. He says, not only have I conquered death by resurrection; but I also have dominion over death itself.
Bede· Commentary on Revelation, 735Early medieval English
Revelation 1:18
And have the keys of death and the grave, so that I can destroy the living and raise the dead. The key here signifies the power and authority over life, death, and the grave.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Revelation 1:18
Two precisions worth having on Revelation 1:18JFB on the word, Wesley on the limit
First, the word. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown: have . . . keys of hell--Greek, "Hades"; Hebrew, "Sheol." "Hell" in the sense, the place of torment, answers to a different Greek word, namely, Gehenna.
The distinction is not pedantry. The keys named here are over the realm of the dead, not over the place of final judgment, and the verse says less — and something more specific — than the older English rendering suggests.
Second, the limit. John Wesley: “In the intermediate state, the body abides in death, the soul in hades. Christ hath the keys of, that is, the power over, both; killing or quickening of the body, and disposing of the soul, as it pleaseth him. He gave St. Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven; but not the keys of death or of hades.”
Wesley’s last sentence is the sharpest observation on this symbol anywhere in the commentaries, and it is simply an observation about what the text does and does not say. Keys of the kingdom were given. These were not.
The Key That Was Taken Away
— Luke 11:52, and the one charge worse than misuseWoe to you experts in the law! For you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”Two clauses, and the second is the weight of it: they did not enter in themselves.
key of knowledge--not the key to open knowledge, but knowledge, the only key to open heaven. In Mt 23:13, they are accused of shutting heaven; here of taking away the key, which was worse. A right knowledge of God's Word is eternal life (Joh 17:3); but this they took away from the people, substituting for it their wretched traditions.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Luke 11:52
By the "key of knowledge" the Lord meant the teaching and guidance through the Law, which is able to lead to Christ. For the Law undoubtedly serves as a tutor leading to Christ (Gal. 3:24).
Theophylact of Ohrid· Commentary on Luke, 1107Eastern Orthodox
Luke 11:52
It is worth being careful here, because the verse is easy to aim at other people. Jesus is addressing a specific group of teachers about a specific failure — handling the Scriptures in a way that stopped people reaching what the Scriptures were for. The charge is not that they were scholars. It is that the key ended up further from ordinary people than it had been before they touched it, and that is a charge any teacher in any century can earn.
This key is Christ the Lord, by whom the hidden places of our hearts are unlocked to believing faith.
Maximus of Turin· Sermon 43.2, 465Latin, fifth century
Luke 11:52
What Scripture says outright
- Revelation 3:7
Isaiah 22:22 quoted almost verbatim and applied to Christ, in His own words to a church.
- Revelation 1:18
The keys of death and Hades claimed directly, with the resurrection given as the ground in the same sentence.
- Matthew 16:19
Keys of the kingdom named and given. What they confer is the disputed part — the giving is not.
What readers have heard in it
Readings named as readings.
- Isaiah 22:22
That Eliakim is a type of Christ — held by JFB and by much of the tradition, and strengthened by Revelation 3:7 quoting the verse. Isaiah 22 itself ends with the peg giving way and the burden falling, which is not part of the picture and is usually left unmentioned.
- Revelation 9:1
That the fallen star is Satan. Widely read that way; also read as an angel under orders, since the key is givento him and chapter 20’s key-bearer is plainly an angel of God. Revelation does not name him.
The Voices
— named, with the work to go and readThis is a short symbol and the useful commentary on it is correspondingly exact rather than expansive. Wesley and Clarke establish what a key on a shoulder actually was; Henry and JFB connect Isaiah 22 to Revelation 3 without overreaching; Bede states the claim of Revelation 1:18 in a sentence; and Wesley’s note distinguishing the keys of the kingdom from the keys of death is the single most useful line written on the subject.
The last key in the BibleWesley on Revelation 20:1
“Having the key of the bottomless pit - Mentioned before, chap. ix, 1. And a great chain in his hand - The angel of the bottomless pit was shut up therein before the beginning of the first woe. But it is now first that Satan, after he had occasioned the third woe, is both chained and shut up.”
However the millennium is read — and MannaFest’s own position is stated where that question belongs — the symbol’s ending is the same in every reading. The Bible’s first keys open. Its last key locks.
Where Marcus Lands
A key carried openly on a steward’s shoulder; a key taken away by men who would not go in; and a set of keys claimed by someone who had been on the other side of that door and come back.
Where to Go Next
— grouped, because a pile of titles is not a hand-offThe key, and the studies around it
Where the key is the argument
Where the authority comes from
Where the picture goes on
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: