Ezekiel 28

Chap. XXVIII. Ver. 1—26. Another lamentation for the king of Tyre; and a prediction of the fall of Zidon (or Sidon) and the restoration of Israel.—The greater part of this chapter relates to the king of Tyre, called in the Phoenician annals, Ithobalus. He appears to have been a vain and impious man, who affected divine honours. The Prophet treats his foolish pretensions with severe irony, and predicts his doom. He then takes up a funeral dirge and lamentation over him, in which his former pomp and splendour are finely contrasted with his fall, in terms that seem frequently to allude to the fall of a [cherub] from heaven. This dirge (ver. 12—18) is of course poetical. The latter part of the chapter announces the fall of Zidon the mother city of Tyre; and it concludes with promises of deliverance to the people of Israel from all their enemies, and a restoration to their land after all their dispersions; promises which chiefly apply to the general restoration of the Jews, which is yet future and perhaps distant, after all the enemies of the truth and of the church are brought into subjection.