Ezek 26

26:1–28:19 The message against Tyre, Israel’s northwestern neighbor, is much more substantial than the short oracles preceding it. It takes the form of three nearly parallel panels (26:2-21; 27:1-36; and 28:1-19), each presenting a variation on the same message—that Tyre would come to a horrible end and exist no more (27:36).26:1 February 3, 585 BC was about seven months after the fall of Jerusalem.

26:2 Like its neighbors, Tyre rejoiced over the fall of Jerusalem, which eliminated a rival trading center and potentially opened up new trade routes and markets for Tyre.

26:3-6 The many nations with which Tyre wanted to trade would instead come against her equipped for war, and like Jerusalem, she would become plunder for their armies. • waves of the sea crashing against your shoreline: This is a particularly apt metaphor for an assault on Tyre, which lay on a small coastal island.

26:7-11 Tyre’s projected destruction is described in great detail, conveying certainty as to the conflict’s outcome.

26:12-14 The end result was exactly as the prophet had described earlier in metaphorical language. Tyre would become a bare rock, a desolate haunt for local fishermen to spread their nets to dry, instead of a bustling center for long-distance trading vessels and caravans from the east (26:2). According to Josephus, Tyre was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years, although it was not finally destroyed until the time of Alexander the Great (332 BC).

26:15-16 The economic impact of Tyre’s fall would spread out to her trading partners along the whole coastline, causing their rulers to abdicate.

26:17-18 The funeral song (see study note on 19:1-14) for Tyre would be taken up and repeated from place to place. • naval power . . . spread fear: Tyre’s trading practices were apparently based on conquest, subjugation, and exploitation (see 28:16, 18).

26:19-21 God would demonstrate his sovereign power by utterly destroying Tyre. It would be as though that great city had sunk into the depths of the chaotic ocean waves, with its inhabitants condemned to the pit where the unrighteous dead reside, never to return.