Integrity: Beyond Loyalty

Let me tell you about a manager I’ll call Greg. You’ve probably worked with someone like him. You may even be him.

Greg runs operations for a family-owned distribution company. The owner hired him eight years ago and has trusted him more every year since. Greg is first in the building and last to leave. He knows every account by name. When the owner takes a vacation, Greg is the reason he can actually relax.

Over the last few years, Greg has made a series of sensible requests. Two more people for his team. A bigger budget to support them. A new rewards initiative that, by its second year, everyone in the building was calling “Greg’s project.” Then a title upgrade, and an office with a window. Each request came with a solid business case, and the owner approved every one. Greg’s annual reviews say what they’ve always said: loyal, dependable, all in.

Ask Greg about any of it, and he’ll tell you, without a trace of irony, “I’m just doing my job.” He believes it.

But step back far enough and a pattern becomes visible. Greg’s department keeps getting bigger, but the company’s margins don’t. Every decision made sense on its own. Taken together, they’ve been building something with Greg’s name on it.

Economists have a term for this. They call it empire building. Michael Jensen, one of the most influential economists of the last half-century, observed that managers and owners often disagree about how large a company ought to be. Growth puts more resources under a manager’s control, and a manager’s pay and promotions tend to rise with the size of what he runs.¹ What makes empire building so hard to catch is that it wears the clothes of growth, and growth is what every owner says he wants.

Most of us measure integrity in business by one standard: loyalty to the people above us, whether that’s a boss, a board, or shareholders. Greg passes that test with flying colors. In fact, most empire builders do.

But true integrity raises a question: If a leader can look entirely loyal to the people he reports to while serving himself, is loyalty the true measure of integrity?

To answer this, we turn to a manager who lived about twenty-seven hundred years ago. He was the Greg of his day. He ran a king’s household in Jerusalem. And the weakness God exposed in that one man turned out to be the condition of an entire city. It’s the same weakness Greg carries into the office every morning.

A City in Crisis

The man’s name is Shebna. To understand him, you first have to understand the city he served and the world he lived in.

In the late 700s BC, Judah was a small kingdom living in the shadow of a superpower. The Assyrian Empire dominated the region and had already swallowed Judah’s northern neighbor, Israel. Judah’s king, Hezekiah, knew his country could be next. In 701 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded.

Isaiah 22 describes how Jerusalem braced for the assault:

“In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool, and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool” (Isaiah 22:8–11, ESV).

Picture the scene. A city in emergency mode, inspecting the weapons and shields, patching weak places in the walls, securing the water supply. If you’ve ever led a company through a crisis, you know that kind of urgency. Everyone is working, and every task matters.

Then Isaiah adds one line: “But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago” (v.11). Jerusalem did everything a responsible city should do except look to God.

And it gets worse. God “called for weeping and mourning” as an act of repentance, and the city threw a party instead: “joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (vv.12–13).

Right in the middle of this chapter, God sends Isaiah to confront one man: “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household” (v.15).

“Over the household” was the highest office a subject could hold in Judah. Shebna controlled the king’s treasury and managed the internal affairs of the kingdom.² In today’s terms, he was something like a chief of staff and a chief operating officer rolled into one. The king owned the house. Shebna ran it.

There is some question about chronology in the text, because by the time the Assyrian army reached Jerusalem, another man held Shebna’s office, and Shebna had been moved down to secretary (Isaiah 36:3).³ Yet Isaiah places him right beside the city in this chapter. It is not because the prophet confused the facts. He does it on purpose. Isaiah is intentionally pointing to something.

This Iniquity, This Steward

Notice how Isaiah chapter 22 connects Shebna and Jerusalem. God describes the sin of the entire city and declares, “Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die” (v.14). In the next breath, He instructs the prophet: “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna” (v.15). This iniquity. This steward. The connection is right there in the wording.

That’s unusual for Isaiah. His book is full of messages to nations, cities, kings, and crowds. Shebna is the only individual he confronts this way.⁴ Everyone else in chapter 22 is addressed as a group. But suddenly, God focuses on a single name.

Why him? It’s because of the office he held. When a company starts drifting off course, you can usually see it first in the people closest to the top. The person who runs the owner’s house is where the condition of the whole house shows up. Shebna wasn’t the only person in Jerusalem who had stopped looking to God, but he was the one entrusted with the king’s house. Commentators have understood him as the face of the false security and self-indulgence Isaiah had just condemned in the city.⁵

In other words, Isaiah takes Jerusalem's condition and gives it a name.

And if Shebna is Jerusalem with a face, then what he was building tells us what God’s people were building.

A Party and a Tomb

Isaiah gives us one piece of evidence from the city and one from the man. Put them side by side, and they tell the same story.

The city’s evidence is the party. Facing an invading army, with God calling them to mourn and repent, the people of Jerusalem said, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” If death was coming, they would at least enjoy themselves first.

Shebna’s evidence is a tomb. Here is what God told Isaiah to say to him:

“What have you to do here, and whom have you here, that you have cut out here a tomb for yourself, you who cut out a tomb on the height and carve a dwelling for yourself in the rock?” (v.16).

In our culture, we would not think of a tomb as an example of empire building. But consider that in that culture, a tomb is a monument. It’s carved out of solid rock, and it isn’t something you decide on a whim. Someone has to plan it, pay for it, hire the stonecutters, and keep the work going for months, maybe years. The Hebrew verbs in this verse describe ongoing action, so Isaiah shows Shebna in the middle of the project.⁶ That tells us we’re looking at a long series of decisions, all pointed in the same direction. And a series of decisions like that shows the direction of a man’s integrity.

What’s more, God had Isaiah question him: “What have you to do here, and whom have you here?” The question suggests Shebna had no family roots there. He had been appointed to his position. Yet he carved a permanent claim into the rock, as if the place belonged to him. The steward had started acting like the owner. In verse 18, God mentions “glorious chariots,” further evidence of a man collecting symbols of his own importance.

Here’s the part that should make every manager uneasy. Shebna’s title, translated as “steward,” comes from a Hebrew word meaning to be useful or of service.⁷ It’s easy to imagine how a man with that title could explain a project like this to himself. Building is part of the job. A steward takes care of things. It’s the same thing Greg would say: “I’m just doing my job.”

The city faced death with a party. Shebna faced it with a monument. One looked for security in pleasure, the other in legacy. Neither looked to the Lord.

That’s empire building at the level of the soul: growth and legacy that pass for loyal service, but every decision serves the self.

And that brings us to the heart of integrity: whom are we truly serving? Who is the real Master?

The Silent King

I was fascinated to notice the king never says a word. King Hezekiah owned the house Shebna ran, but in this passage every move belongs to God.

It is the Lord who sends the message: “Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts” (v.15). It is the Lord who passes the sentence: “Behold, the LORD will hurl you away violently, O you strong man” (v.17). It is the Lord who removes Shebna: “I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station” (v.19). And it is the Lord who names his replacement: “I will call my servant Eliakim… I will clothe him with your robe… and will commit your authority to his hand” (vv.20–21).

Shebna answered to the king. But the verdict of judgment belonged to God.

Notice how completely God undoes what Shebna built. Shebna carved a tomb “here,” and God tells him he will be thrown into a distant land: “There you shall die” (v.18). His glorious chariots go with him into disgrace. His robe, his sash, and his authority go to another man. Everything he built for himself is undone by the One he never looked to.

God also calls him something that should stop every loyal manager cold: “you shame of your master’s house” (v.18). The man who looked like the model steward ended up disgracing the very house he was trusted to run. When the ultimate Master is ignored, even loyalty to the boss turns out to be a cover for serving yourself.

This is where business thinking runs out of road. Economists often assume the answer to empire-building lies in a framework called agency theory. Michael Jensen and William Meckling define it as an owner entrusting what belongs to him to an agent, and because the agent has interests of his own, the company builds oversight, incentives, and audits to keep him in line.⁸ It sounds solid — accountability, rewards, and consequences seem like the right protection against empire building. But its standard is loyalty to the boss, and Greg meets that standard every year. For a long time, Shebna probably did too. God sees something different.

You and I answer to someone. A boss, a board, shareholders, customers. That’s the first layer, and it matters. But behind every person you report to stands the true Master, the Lord Himself, to whom you owe allegiance. Integrity is measured there — in the presence of the true King.

So let me ask you the question God asked Shebna. What are you building? More importantly, for whom are you really building?

You can call it stewardship, or just doing your job, but integrity reaches beyond loyalty to the people you report to. It asks whether you are carving out a monument to yourself or serving the agenda of the only Master truly worth serving.

Notes

¹ Michael C. Jensen, “Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers,” American Economic Review 76, no. 2 (May 1986). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=99580

² Charles John Ellicott, Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers; Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; Pulpit Commentary; all on Isaiah 22:15. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/22-15.htm

³ United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible notes on Isaiah 22, https://bible.usccb.org/bible/isaiah/22; Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, on Isaiah 22:15.

⁴ Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary; Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; both on Isaiah 22:15. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/22-15.htm

⁵ Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers; Benson Commentary; both on Isaiah 22:15. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/22-15.htm

⁶ C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, on Isaiah 22:16. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/22-15.htm

⁷ Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, “sakan” (Strong’s 5532). https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5532.htm

⁸ Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure,” Journal of Financial Economics (1976); summarized in “The Lessons of Michael C. Jensen,” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=172564