Chapter XVII. Tyre (Continued): Sidon. Chapters xxvii., xxviii.

The remaining oracles on Tyre (chs. xxvii., xxviii. 1‐19) are somewhat different both in subject and mode of treatment from the chapter we have just finished. Ch. xxvi. is in the main a direct announcement of the fall of Tyre, delivered in the oratorical style which is the usual vehicle of prophetic address. She is regarded as a state occupying a definite place among the other states of the world, and sharing the fate of other peoples who by their conduct towards Israel or their ungodliness and arrogance have incurred the anger of Jehovah. The two great odes which follow are purely ideal delineations of what Tyre is in herself; her destruction is assumed as certain rather than directly predicted, and the prophet gives free play to his imagination in the effort to set forth the conception of the city which was impressed on his mind. In ch. xxvii. he dwells on the external greatness and magnificence of Tyre, her architectural splendour, her political and military power, and above all her amazing commercial enterprise. Ch. xxviii., on the other hand, is a meditation on the peculiar genius of Tyre, her inner spirit of pride and self‐sufficiency, as embodied in the person of her king. From a literary point of view the two chapters are amongst the most beautiful in the whole book. In the twenty‐seventh chapter the fiery indignation of the prophet almost disappears, giving place to the play of poetic fancy, and a flow of lyric emotion more perfectly rendered than in any other part of Ezekiel’s writings. The distinctive feature of each passage is the elegy pronounced over the fall of Tyre; and although the elegy seems just on the point of passing into the taunt‐song, yet the accent of triumph is never suffered to overwhelm the note of sadness to which these poems owe their special charm.