Tyre Hears the Sound of Its Own Fall

The Hebrew gives the year and the day but no month, so something has dropped out; some Greek manuscripts supply “the first month”. The eleventh year of the captivity is 587/586 BC, the year Jerusalem fell, so Tyre’s gloating in the next verse is fresh.

Tyre had been Jerusalem’s partner in the plot against Babylon: its envoys were in Jerusalem with Edom’s, Moab’s, Ammon’s and Sidon’s in 594 (Jeremiah 27:3). The “Aha” is a former ally’s. “She is turned unto me” means the trade Jerusalem once drew will now swing Tyre’s way.

Tyre stood mostly on an island about half a mile off the coast, battered by the Mediterranean, so the image of waves suited it. Josephus, citing Phoenician records, says Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years under its king Ithobaal. “Behold, I am against thee” opens a formal challenge to combat.

Tyre is Tsor in Hebrew, “Rock”, and the sentence plays on it: the city called Rock will be scraped down to “the top of a rock”, bare and sun-baked. “Scrape” is a verb found only here, the image of dust swept off stone until nothing lies on it.

Fishermen spread their nets on bare rocks to dry. The phrase comes back in 47:10, reversed: in the vision of the river from the temple, fishermen will stand from En-gedi to En-eglaim, “a place to spread forth nets”, where the Dead Sea has come alive.

The “daughters in the field” are Tyre’s settlements on the mainland, facing the island, including the older shore town that Greek writers called Palaetyrus, Old Tyre. The island could hold out for years while its mainland towns took the first blow.

“Nebuchadrezzar”, with an r, is closer to the Babylonian Nabu-kudurri-usur, “Nabu, protect my heir”; Ezekiel and Jeremiah spell it so, Kings and Daniel with an n. “King of kings” was the Mesopotamian emperor’s title, and Daniel 2:37 gives it to him too.

Every item here is land siegecraft: a siege tower, a ramp, the roof of great shields over the sappers. That fits the mainland city. The island itself could not be reached by any ramp until Alexander the Great built a causeway out to it in 332 BC.

“Engines of war” renders a word found only here, the blow of his battering ram. “Axes” is literally “swords”, but the same word is used of iron tools in Exodus 20:25, “if thou lift up thy tool upon it”. The towers are to be hacked apart as well as battered.

“A city wherein is made a breach” uses the verb baqa‘, the word for Jerusalem’s own wall being broken through in 2 Kings 25:4. Tyre, which laughed at Jerusalem’s broken gates, is to see horsemen pour through a breach in its own walls, raising a cloud of dust over the city.

“Strong garrisons” is literally “the pillars of thy strength”, probably the sacred pillars of Tyre’s great temple of Melqart. Herodotus, who visited Tyre in the fifth century BC, saw two pillars there, one of gold and one of emerald glass that shone at night.

When Alexander besieged the island city in 332 BC, Greek historians report that he built his causeway out of the rubble of mainland Tyre, its stones and timber thrown into the sea. Later readers took this verse as fulfilled to the letter, though Ezekiel names no Alexander.

Isaiah 23:16 mocks Tyre as an ageing harlot: “Take an harp, go about the city... make sweet melody, sing many songs.” Revelation 18:22 takes up this verse for fallen Babylon: “the voice of harpers... shall be heard no more at all in thee.” A trading city is silenced by losing its music.

“Thou shalt be built no more” is hard to square with history on a flat reading: Tyre was rebuilt and flourished, and Paul’s ship unloaded there (Acts 21:3). Some apply the verse to the mainland city, others read it as the language of total overthrow; 29:18 itself admits the Babylonian siege gained nothing.

“Isles” is ‘iyyim, the coastlands and islands of the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Aegean and beyond, where Tyre’s ships traded and its colonies stood. “Shake” is the word for an earthquake. The groans of the wounded are heard across the sea.

“Princes of the sea” are the rulers of the ports and colonies tied to Tyre; Carthage was a Tyrian foundation. Their gestures match those of the king of Nineveh, who “laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes” (Jonah 3:6).

This is the first of three laments for Tyre, followed by chapter 27 and 28:12–19. “Renowned” is literally “praised”. “Inhabited of seafaring men” is literally “inhabited from the seas”, since the city lived by the sea; the Greek reads “destroyed from the sea”.

“Troubled” is the verb of Joseph’s brothers when he revealed himself: “they were troubled at his presence” (Genesis 45:3), struck dumb with dismay. “Departure” is Tyre’s going out, its fall. The isles are named twice, framing the lament as verse 15 framed its opening.

“The deep” is tehom, the primeval waters of Genesis 1:2 and “the fountains of the great deep” broken open at the flood (Genesis 7:11). Tyre, which lived by mastering the sea, is to be covered by the waters that creation held back.

“The pit” is the underworld, and “the people of old time” are the ancient dead. Chapter 32:18–32 will populate it with nation after nation. “The land of the living” is the phrase of Psalm 27:13 and 116:9. The Greek reads the last clause as Tyre never again standing in that land.

“Terror” is ballahot, sudden terrors, the word of Job 18:14, “the king of terrors”. All three Tyre oracles end on the same note of nonexistence (26:21; 27:36; 28:19), as though the city were being erased three times. “Sought for... never found” is the fate of a city that was everywhere.