Ezekiel 26

Chapters xxvi.-xxviii. form a connected series of prophecies against Tyre and Zidon, divided into five parts.

1 the eleventh year. It is remarkable that this was the year in which Jerusalem was taken. The month is not mentioned; but it was probably the fifth—the month immediately following that of the fall of Jerusalem (Jer. iii. 6-12). Tyre has scarcely uttered its proud taunts against Zion, when Jehovah, by the mouth of His prophet, announced its own doom.

2 [that was] the gates of the people. Rather, as R.V., “the gate of the peoples.” Referring to the great confluence of people from all parts to Jerusalem, not only for worship, but for trade.

she is turned unto Me. Her commerce and wealth will now be transferred to Me.

3 many nations. The Babylonians under Nebuchadrezzar, the Macedonians under Alexander, the Crusaders, and the Saracens.

4 and make her [like] the top of a rock. “And make her a bare rock,” R.V. Her destruction shall be complete.

5 a spoil to the nations. See note on Isa. xxiii. 1. When Ezekiel uttered these predictions, Tyre had attained the highest prosperity, as head of the Phœnician cities and colonies. Skinner (Ezekiel) has a fine passage on the greatness and the extensive commerce of Tyre, and quotes in illustration Matthew Arnold’s The Scholar Gipsy. The islandtown had successfully resisted a siege of five years by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria; and it is doubtful whether Nebuchadrezzar succeeded in taking that part of the city after besieging it for thirteen years. He, however, destroyed the other part, and reduced the whole to dependence; and thus gave the first blow to its power. Alexander captured it, 332 n.c., by constructing a mole from the mainland. This has, during a long series of ages, aided the accumulation of sand; so that the port is now almost useless; whilst the rocky island is literally (as

Dr. Robinson found) a “place for the spreading of nets”; and a little town of miserable hovels marks the site of ancient Tyre.

These prophecies and the subsequent story of Tyre are a perpetual warning to the individual and the nation against a success that is purely material. “The commercial spirit is indeed but one of the forms in which men devote themselves to the service of this present world; but in any community where it reigns supreme we may confidently look for the same signs of religious decay which Ezekiel detected in Tyre in his day” (Skinner).

6 her daughters which are in the field. That is, the dependent towns on the mainland.

9 engines of war. R.V., “his battering engines.”

11 thy strong garrisons. Or, “pillars of thy strength” (R.V.). The Hebrew word is commonly used for consecrated pillars. Herodotus (ii. 24) mentions two pillars, one of emerald, the other of gold, in the temple of Hercules at Tyre.

12 and they shall lay thy stones, etc. This was done when Alexander used the materials of the town on the mainland to make a mole for approaching the island.

20. I shall set thy glory in the land of the living. The Septuagint, whose reading Moffatt here follows, has, “thou shalt exist no more in the land of the living.” This seems the more intelligible rendering.