Who was like Tyre [so glorious]— In the midst of the sea? When thy wares went forth from the seas— Thou filledst the peoples; With thy wealth and thy merchandise— Thou enrichedst the earth. Now art thou broken from the seas— In depths of the waters; Thy merchandise and all thy multitude— Are fallen therein. All the inhabitants of the islands— Are shocked at thee, And their kings shudder greatly— With tearful countenances. They that trade among the peoples ...— Hiss over thee; Thou art become a terror— And art no more for ever.
Such is the end of Tyre. She has vanished utterly from the earth; the imposing fabric of her greatness is like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and nothing remains to tell of her former glory but the mourning of the nations who were once enriched by her commerce.
Ch. xxviii. 1‐19.—Here the prophet turns to the prince of Tyre, who is addressed throughout as the impersonation of the consciousness of a great commercial community. We happen to know from Josephus that the name of the reigning king at this time was Ithobaal or Ethbaal II. But it is manifest that the terms of Ezekiel’s message have no reference to the individuality of this or any other prince of Tyre. It is not likely that the king could have exercised any great political influence in a city “whose merchants were all princes”; indeed, we learn from Josephus that the monarchy was abolished in favour of some sort of elective constitution not long after the death of Ithobaal. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Ezekiel has in view any special manifestation of arrogance on the part of the royal house, such as a pretension to be descended from the gods. The king here is simply the representative of the genius of the community, the sins of heart charged against him are the expression of the sinful principle which the prophet detected beneath the refinement and luxury of Tyre, and his shameful death only symbolises the downfall of the city. The prophecy consists of two parts: first, an accusation against the prince of Tyre, ending with a threat of destruction (vv. 2‐10); and second, a lament over his fall (vv. 11‐19). The point of view is very different in these two sections. In the first the prince is still conceived as a man; and the language put into his mouth, although extravagant, does not exceed the limits of purely human arrogance. In the second, however, the king appears as an angelic being, an inhabitant of Eden and a companion of the cherub, sinless at first, and falling from his high estate through his own transgression. It almost seems as if the prophet had in his mind the idea of a tutelary spirit or genius of Tyre, like the angelic princes in the book of Daniel who preside over the destinies of different nations.(99) But in spite of its enhanced idealism, the passage only clothes in forms drawn from Babylonian mythology the boundless self‐glorification of Tyre; and the expulsion of the prince from paradise is merely the ideal counterpart of the overthrow of the city which is his earthly abode.
The sin of Tyre is an overweening pride, which culminated in an attitude of self‐deification on the part of its king. Surrounded on every hand by the evidences of man’s mastery over the world, by the achievements of human art and industry and enterprise, the king feels as if his throne on the sea‐girt island were a veritable seat of the gods, and as if he himself were a being truly divine. His heart is lifted up; and, forgetful of the limits of his mortality, he “sets his mind like the mind of a god.” The godlike quality on which he specially prides himself is the superhuman wisdom evinced by the extraordinary prosperity of the city with which he identifies himself. Wiser than Daniel! the prophet ironically exclaims; “no secret thing is too dark for thee!” “By thy wisdom and thine insight thou hast gotten thee wealth, and hast gathered gold and silver into thy treasuries: by thy great wisdom in thy commerce thou hast multiplied thy wealth, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches.” The prince sees in the vast accumulation of material resources in Tyre nothing but the reflection of the genius of her inhabitants; and being himself the incarnation of the spirit of the city, he takes the glory of it to himself and esteems himself a god. Such impious self‐exaltation must inevitably call down the vengeance of Him who is the only living God; and Ezekiel proceeds to announce the humiliation of the prince by the “most ruthless of the nations”—_i.e._, the Chaldæans. He shall then know how much of divinity doth hedge a king. In face of them that seek his life he shall learn that he is man and not God, and that there are forces in the world against which the vaunted wisdom of Tyre is of no avail. An ignominious death(100) at the hand of strangers is the fate reserved for the mortal who so proudly exalted himself against all that is called God.