Ezekiel 26King James Version
A burden on Tyre, the great island city of merchants. Many nations shall come up against her, and she shall be scraped bare as the top of a rock. Fishermen will spread their nets on the place where she stood. The chapter is precise and devastating.
God pronounces judgment on Tyre, the great Phoenician trading city, for exulting that Jerusalem's fall will benefit her trade. Nebuchadnezzar will come like waves of the sea: he will break down the walls, kill the people, scrape the stones, make her a bare rock. Many nations will come against her. She will be a place for spreading fishing nets and will never be rebuilt. Kings will tremble at her fall.
Commercial power and geographic security are not ultimate protection: the city that sees another's loss as business opportunity has already condemned itself.
3: "Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up." The sea-wave image is exact: Tyre was an island city, and the judgment comes in the same medium that made her great.
Around 587 BC, just after Jerusalem's fall. Tyre's commercial dominance of eastern Mediterranean trade made her a natural rival-beneficiary of Jerusalem's disruption. She controlled the sea lanes; Jerusalem controlled land routes. The fall of one city was, commercially speaking, good for the other. That calculation turned out to be catastrophically wrong.
Tyre personified as a gloating merchant; Nebuchadnezzar as the first wave; many nations as subsequent waves; the LORD who pronounces and executes; kings of surrounding nations who mourn Tyre's fall.
Tyre's oracle spans three chapters (26 to 28) and is the most elaborate of Ezekiel's foreign nation oracles. Alexander the Great's actual destruction of Tyre in 332 BC, when he built a causeway to the island using debris from the mainland, is often cited as a striking fulfillment of verse 4's 'scrape the dust from her and make her a bare rock.' Ezekiel himself acknowledges the partial fulfillment by Nebuchadnezzar in 29:18.
For when watching someone gloat over another's pain. The merchants of Tyre looked at Jerusalem's catastrophe and calculated their gain. The chapter names that coldness and says it has a cost.
1And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste:
3Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.
4And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.
5It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD: and it shall become a spoil to the nations.
6And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people.
8He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee.
9And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.
10By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach.
11With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground.
12And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.
13And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard.
14And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
15Thus saith the Lord GOD to Tyrus; Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, when the wounded cry, when the slaughter is made in the midst of thee?
16Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put off their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with trembling; they shall sit upon the ground, and shall tremble at every moment, and be astonished at thee.
17And they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and say to thee, How art thou destroyed, that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants, which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it!
18Now shall the isles tremble in the day of thy fall; yea, the isles that are in the sea shall be troubled at thy departure.
19For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;
20When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the living;
21I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.