The Ruler Who Mistook Wealth for Divinity

The ruler of Tyre in these years, according to Josephus quoting the Tyrian records, was Ithobaal III, and it was in his reign that Nebuchadnezzar’s thirteen-year siege began. This oracle is addressed to the man on the island throne while Ezekiel sits among the exiles.

“Prince” here is nagid, a leader, not melekh, king. Tyre’s chief god was Melqart, whose name means “king of the city”, and the king stood close to him in cult. Isaiah 31:3 answers the same confusion about Egypt in the same words: “the Egyptians are men, and not God.”

The name is spelled Dan’el here and in 14:14, which matches Danel, a wise and just king of the old Canaanite poems found at Ugarit; many think that figure is meant rather than Ezekiel’s young contemporary in Babylon. Either way the praise is sarcastic: wisdom beyond the proverbial wise man.

The wealth was made, not inherited: “thou hast gotten” is literally “thou hast made”. Zechariah 9:3 paints Tyre’s treasury in the same colours: “Tyrus did build herself a strong hold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets.”

The chain runs wisdom, trade, wealth, pride. Deuteronomy 8:13–14 had warned Israel of the same sequence: when “thy silver and thy gold is multiplied... Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD.” “Traffick” is rekhullah, trading, from the root of the travelling merchant of 27:3.

The charge of verse 2 is repeated before the sentence. In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought and will more than of feeling, so to set one’s heart “as the heart of God” is to think as though one had God’s mind and could never be caught out.

“The terrible of the nations” is Ezekiel’s name for Babylon and its armies (30:11; 31:12; 32:12). “Defile” is chillel, profane, and “brightness” is a word found only here and in verse 17, the splendour of a king in his court.

“Deaths” is plural, an intensive: a thoroughly violent death. For the king of an island city the fitting end is a sailor’s end, “in the midst of the seas”, the very place where he claimed to sit enthroned as a god (verse 2).

“Him that slayeth thee” uses chalal, to pierce, the same root as “defile” in verse 7. The man who set himself in God’s seat is both pierced and profaned, one Hebrew root carrying both meanings. The question is a taunt: say it now, with the sword in you.

The Phoenicians, according to Herodotus, practised circumcision, so to “die the deaths of the uncircumcised” is to die in disgrace, without honourable burial, among the outcasts. Chapter 32:19–30 fills the pit with such company, nation by nation.

A second word follows, and it changes genre: the first was a prose sentence on the prince, and this is a lament for the king, melekh. The title rises as the language rises, and the lament will reach higher than any other passage in the Tyre oracles.

“Thou sealest up the sum” is literally “a seal of proportion”, perhaps a signet ring carved to perfect measure. A signet was a king’s most personal possession: Haggai 2:23 promises Zerubbabel, “I... will make thee as a signet”, and Jeremiah 22:24 tears the signet from Coniah’s hand.

The Hebrew lists nine stones, and all nine are among the twelve set in the high priest’s breastpiece (Exodus 28:17–20). The Greek lists all twelve, with silver and gold besides. “Tabrets” and “pipes” may be jewellers’ terms, settings and sockets, rather than musical instruments.

“Covereth” is the verb for the cherubim over the ark, “covering the mercy seat with their wings” (Exodus 25:20). “The stones of fire” recall Ezekiel’s own vision, where coals of fire lie “between the cherubims” (10:2). The king is pictured in the innermost places of holiness.

“Perfect” is tamim, blameless, the word used of Noah, “perfect in his generations” (Genesis 6:9), and of what God asked of Abraham: “walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1). “Iniquity was found” is the language of a flaw discovered on inspection.

“Filled... with violence” is the phrase of Genesis 6:11, “the earth was filled with violence”, the charge before the flood. The Eden language of verse 13 and the flood language here run the king’s history along the lines of the opening chapters of Genesis. “Cast thee as profane” means desecrated, expelled from holy ground.

Laying a fallen king’s body before other kings makes it a spectacle. Isaiah 14:16 does the same with the fallen king of Babylon: “They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee... Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?” The admired figure becomes something to stare at.

“Thy sanctuaries” is plural, Tyre’s temples. Josephus says Hiram, Solomon’s ally, rebuilt the temples of Heracles, that is Melqart, and Astarte. “The iniquity of thy traffick” names dishonest trade itself as what defiles holy places. The fire comes from inside: nothing needs to be brought against him.

“Astonished” is shamem, a verb that means both to be desolate and to be appalled: the city lies desolate and the onlookers are appalled. “All they that know thee” are those who knew him in person, the partners and rulers of the trading world.

Sidon, twenty-five miles up the coast, was Tyre’s older sister city. Genesis 10:15 makes Sidon the firstborn of Canaan, and Isaiah 23:12 calls Tyre the “daughter of Zidon”. The shortest foreign oracle in these chapters goes to the mother city.

Jezebel was “the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians” (1 Kings 16:31), and she brought the worship of Baal into Israel’s court. Sidon’s religion had shaped the northern kingdom’s darkest years, which may be why it has a place in the list of seven.

“I will be glorified” is the verb of Exodus 14:4 and 14:17–18, where God says at the sea, “I will get me honour upon Pharaoh.” God’s glory is displayed through judgment on a city that set itself against him, as it was on Egypt’s king.

Pestilence and blood are a pair Ezekiel has used before (5:17; 14:19) and will use of Gog (38:22). Sidon’s worst hour came later: when it rebelled against Persia in 345 BC, Artaxerxes III took it, and Diodorus says forty thousand died, many burning themselves in their houses.

The image comes from Numbers 33:55: the peoples Israel failed to drive out “shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides”. “Pricking brier” and “grieving thorn” are neighbours who wound. The recognition formula closes with the fuller “I am the Lord GOD”.

The land is named as the land given “to my servant Jacob”, not to Abraham, echoing God’s promise at Bethel: “the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it” (Genesis 28:13). Ezekiel 37:25 uses the same wording. The nations who watched the scattering will watch the gathering.

Building houses and planting vineyards reverses the covenant curse: “thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes” (Deuteronomy 28:30). Jeremiah told the exiles to build houses in Babylon (29:5); here they build them at home.