1 Insular Tyre possessed two harbours, a northern one called the Sidonian, because it was on the Sidonian side, and one on the opposite or south-eastern side, which was called the Egyptian harbour from the direction in which it pointed. The Sidonian was the more celebrated of the two, and consisted of an inner harbour, situated within the wall of the city, and an outer one, formed by a row of rocks, which lay at a distance of about three hundred paces to the north-west of the island, and ran parallel to the opposite coast of the mainland, so as to form a roadstead in which ships could anchor (vid. Arrian, ii. 20; Strabo, xvi. 2. 2'6). This northern harbour is still held by the city of Sur, whereas the Egyptian harbour with the south-eastern portion of the island has been buried by the sand driven against the coasts by the south winds, so that even the writers of the Middle Ages make no allusion to it. (See Movers, Phonizier, II. 1, pp. 214 sqq.)
beauty and glory, from ver. 4 onwards, Tyre is depicted allegorically as a beautiful ship, splendidly built and equipped throughout, and its destruction is afterwards represented as a shipwreck occasioned by the east wind (vers. 26 sqq.).1 The words, " in the heart of the seas is thy territory " (ver. 4a), are equally applicable to the city of Tyre and to a ship, the building of which is described in what follows. The comparison of Tyre to a ship was very naturally suggested by the situation of the city in the midst of the sea, completely surrounded by water. As a ship, it must of necessity be built of wood. The shipbuilders selected the finest kinds of wood for the purpose; cypresses of Antilibanus for double planks, which formed the sides of the vessel, and cedar of Lebanon for the mast. Senir, according to Deut. iii. 9, was the Amoritish name of Hermon or Antilibanus, whereas the Sidonians called it Sirioji. On the other hand, Senir occurs in 1 Chron. v. 23, and Slienir in Song of Sol. iv. 8, in connection with Hermon, where they are used to denote separate portions of Antilibanus. Ezekiel evidently uses Senir as a foreign name, which had been retained to his own time, whereas Sirion had possibly become obsolete, as the names had both the same meaning (see the comm. on Deut. iii. 9). The naming of the places from which the several materials were obtained for the fitting out of the ship, serve to heighten the glory of its construction and give an ideal character to the picture. All lands have contributed their productions to complete the glory and might of Tyre. Cypress- wood was frequently used by the ancients for buildings and (according to Virgil, Georg, ii. 443) also for ships, because it was
1 Jerome recognised this allegory, and has explained it correctly as follows: " He (the prophet) speaks tpokikcos, as though addressing a ship, and points out its beauty and the abundance of everything. Then, after having depicted all its supplies, he announces that a storm will rise, and the south wind (auster) will blow, by which great waves will be gathered up, and the vessel will be wrecked. In all this he is referring to the overthrow of the city by King Nabuchodonosor," etc. Raschi and others give the same explanation.
exempt from the attacks of worms, and was almost imperishable, and yet very light (Theophr. Hist, plant, v. 8; Plinii Hist. nat. xvi. 79). B*nh7, a dual form, like DTibh in 2 Kings xxv. 4, Isa. xxii. 11, double-planks, used for the two side-walls of the ship. For oars they chose oaks of Bash an {p\W as well as Bip'p in ver. 29 from D*P, to row), and the rowing benches (or deck) were of ivory inlaid in box. Bnp is used in Ex. xxvi. 15 sqq. for the boards or planks of the wooden walls of the tabernacle; here it is employed in a collective sense, either for the rowing benches, of which there were at least two, and sometimes three rows in a vessel, one above another, or more properly, for the deck of the vessel (Kitzig). This was made of shSn, or ivory, inlaid in wood. The ivory is mentioned first as the most valuable material of the BHp, the object being to picture the ship as possessing all possible splendour. The expression D^iB^rna occasions some difficulty, partly on account of the use of the word H3, and partly in connection with the meaning of E^KW, although so much may be inferred from the context, that the allusion is to some kind of wood inlaid with ivory, and the custom of inlaying wood with ivory for the purpose of decoration is attested by Virgil, Aen. x. 137:
But the use of na does not harmonize with the relation of the wood to the ivory inserted in wood; nor can it be defended by the fact that in Lam. iii. 3 an arrow is designated " the son of the quiver." According to this analogy, the ivory ought to have been called the son of the Ashurim, because the ivory is inserted in the wood, and not the wood in the ivory.1 We must therefore adopt the solution proposed by R. Salomo and others, — namely, that the Masoretic division of EPltftfTO into two words is founded upon a mistake, and that it should be read as
1 The Targum has paraphrased it in this way: |sc;32£ pjTDr&O pal ^"21 tt?2, i.e. planks of box or pine inlaid with ivory.
one word D^ttflSj ivory in D*"M$Wjl, i.e. either sherbin-cedar (according to more recent expositors), or box-wood, for which Bochart (Phal. III. 5) has decided. The fact that in Isa. Ix. 13 the "viU'xn is mentioned among the trees growing upon Lebanon, whereas here the D'nrxn are described as coming from the islands of the D???, does not furnish a decisive argument to the contrary. We cannot determine with certainty what species of tree is referred to, and therefore it cannot be affirmed that the tree grew upon Lebanon alone, and not upon the islands of the Mediterranean. D^I3 are the Kme??, the inhabitants of the port of Kltlov in Cyprus; then the Cyprians generally; and here, as in Jer. ii. 10, where DN*tt of the D»ri| are mentioned, in a still broader sense, inhabitants of Cyprus and other islands and coast-lands of the Mediterranean. In 1 Mace. i. 1 and viii. 5, even Macedonia is reckoned as belonging to the 777 X^TTetelfj, or KitUcov. Consequently the place from which the D*"]$Kfl were brought does not furnish any conclusive proof that the Cyprian pine is referred to, although this was frequently used for ship-building. There is just as much ground for thinking of the box, as Bochart does, and we may appeal in support of this to the fact that, according to Theophrastus, there is no place in which it grows more vigorously than on the island of Corsica. In any case, Ezekiel mentions it as a very valuable kind of wood; though we cannot determine with certainty to what wood he refers, either from the place where it grew or from the accounts of the ancients concerning the kinds of wood that ship-builders used. The reason for this, how7ever, is a very simple one, — namely, that the whole description has an ideal character, and, as Hitzig has correctly observed, " the application of the several kinds of wood to the different parts of the ship is evidently only poetical."
The same may be said of the materials of which, according to ver. 7, the sails and awning of the ship were made. Byssiis in party-coloured work (n!?P1? see comm. on Ex. xxvi. 36), i.e.
woven in mixed colours, probably not merely in stripes, but woven witli figures and flowers.1 " From Egypt;" the byssusweaving of Egypt was celebrated in antiquity, so that byssuslinen formed one of the principal articles of export (yid. Movers, ut supra, pp. 317 sqq.). &PJSB, literally, spreading out, evidently signifies the sail, which we expect to find mentioned here, and with which the following clause, u to serve thee for a banner," can be reconciled, inasmuch as it may be assumed either that the sails also served for a banner, because the ships had no actual flag, like those in Wilkinson's engraving, or that the flag (D3) being also extended is included under the term cnsp (Hitzig). The covering of the ship, i.e. the awning which was put up above the deck for protection from the heat of the sun, consisted of purple (rfa?n and PJ?"W> see the comm. on Ex. xxv. 4) from the islands of Elishah, i.e. of the Grecian Peloponnesus, which naturally suggests the Laconian purple so highly valued in antiquity on account of its splendid colour (Plin. Hist. nat. ix. 36, xxi. 8). The account of the building of the ship is followed by the manning, and the attention paid to its condition. The words of ver. 8a may be taken as referring quite as much to the ship as to the city, which was in possession of ships, and is mentioned by name in ver. Sb. The reference to the Sidonians and Arvad, i.e. to the inhabitants of Aradus, a rocky island to the north of Tripolis, as rowers, is not at variance with the latter; since there is no need to understand by the rowers either slaves or servants employed to row, and the Tyrians certainly drew their rowers from the whole of the Phoenician population, whereas the chief men in command of
1 See Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, III. PI. xvi., where engravings are given of Egyptian state-ships with embroidered sails. On one ship a large square sail is displayed in purple-red and purple-blue checks, surrounded by a gold border. The vessel of Antony and Cleopatra in the battle of Actium had also purple sails; and in this case the purple sails were the sign of the admiral's ship, just as in Ezekiel they serve as a mark of distinction (D3)- See Movers, II. 3, p. 165, where the accounts of ancient writers concerning such state-ships are collected together.
the ships, the captain and pilot (D72*n)? were no doubt as a rule citizens of Tyre. The introduction of the inhabitants of Gebal, i.e. the Byblos of the Greeks, the present Jebail, between Tripolis and Berytus (see the comm. on Josh. xiii. 5), who were noted even in Solomon's time as skilful architects (1 Kings v. 32), as repairers of the leak, decidedly favours the supposition that the idea of the ship is still kept in the foreground; and by the naming of those who took charge of the piloting and condition of the vessel, the thought is expressed that all the cities of Phoenicia assisted to maintain the might and glory of Tyre, since Tyre was supreme in Phoenicia. It is not till ver. 9b that the allegory falls into the background. Tyre now appears no longer as a ship, but as a maritime city, into which all the ships of the sea sail, to carry on and improve her commerce.— Vers. 10, 11. Tyre had also made the best provision for its defence. It maintained an army of mercenary troops from foreign countries to protect its colonies and extend its settlements, and entrusted the guarding of the walls of the city to fighting men of Phoenicia. The hired troops specially named in ver. 10 are Pharas, Lud, and Phut, bib is no doubt an African tribe, in Coptic Phaiat, the Libyans of the ancients, who had spread themselves over the whole of North Africa as far as Mauretania (see the comm. on Gen. x. 6). *vh is not the Semitic people of that name, the Lydians (Gen. x. 22), but here, as in ch. xxx. 5, Isa. Ixvi. 19, and Jer. xlvi. 9, the Hamitic people of D^v (Gen. x. 13), probably a general name for the whole of the Moorish tribes, since l*b (ch. xxx. 5) and DHv (Jer. xliv. 9) are mentioned in connection with 1313 as auxiliaries in the Egyptian army. There is something striking in the reference to D'hq, the Persians. Havernick points to the early intercourse carried on by the Phoenicians with Persia through the Persian Gulf, through which the former would no doubt be able to obtain mercenary soldiers, for which it was a general rule to select tribes as remote as possible. Hitzig objects to this, on the ground that there is no proof that tin's intercourse with Persia through the Persian Gulf was carried on in Ezekiel's time, and that even if it were, it does not follow that there were any Persian mercenaries. He therefore proposes to understand by DID, Persians who had settled in Africa in the olden time. But this settlement cannot be inferred with sufficient certainty either from Sallust, Jug. c. 18, or from the occurrence of the African Maicai of Herodotus, iv. 175, along with the Asiatic (Ptol. vi. 7. 14), to take it as an explanation of D"]9. If we compare ch. xxxviii. 5, where Paras is mentioned in connection with Cush and Phut, Gomer and Togarmah, as auxiliaries in the army of Gog, there can be no doubt that Asiatic Persians are intended there. And we have to take the word in the same sense here; for Hitzig's objections consist of pure conjectures which have no conclusive force. Ezekiel evidently intends to give the names of tribes from the far-off east, west, and south, who were enlisted as mercenaries in the military service of Tyre. Hanging the shields and helmets in the citv, to ornament its walls, appears to have been a Phoenician custom, which Solomon also introduced into Judah (1 Kings x. 16, 17; Song of Sol. iv. 4), and which is mentioned again in the times of the Maccabees (1 Mace. iv. 57). — A distinction is drawn in ver. 11 between the mercenary troops on the one hand, and the Aradians, and ty?^ thine army, the military corps consisting of Tyrians, on the other. The latter appear upon the walls of Tyre, because native troops were employed to watch and defend the city, whilst the mercenaries had to march into the field. The air. \ey. 0*1133 (Gammddim) signifies brave men, as Roediger has conclusively shown from the Syrian usage, in his Addenda to Gesenius' Thes. p. 70 seq. It is therefore an epitheton of the native troops of Tyre. — With the words, " they (the troops) completed thy beauty," the picture of the glory of Tyre is rounded off, returning to its starting-point in vers. 4 and 5.
Vers. 12-25. This is followed by a description of the commerce of Tyre with all nations, who delivered their productions in the market of this metropolis of the commerce of the world, and received the wares and manufactures of this city in return. — Ver. 12. Tarshish traded with thee for the multitude of goods of all kinds; ivith silver, iron, tin, and lead they paid for thy sales. Ver. 13. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants; with souls of men and brazen vessels they made thy barter. Ver. 14. From the house of Togarmah they paid horses, riding-horses, and mules for thy sales. Ver. 15. The sons of Dedan were thy merchants; many islands were at thy hand for commerce; ivory horns and ebony they brought thee in payment. Ver. 16. Aram traded with thee for the multitude of thy productions; ivith carbuncle, red purple, and embroidery, and byssus, and corals, and rubies they paid for thy sales. Ver. 17. Judah and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants; with wheat of Minnith and confectionery, and honey and oil, and balsam they made thy barter. Ver. 18. Damascus traded with thee in the multitude of thy productions, for the multitude of goods of all kinds, with wine of Chelbon and white wool. Ver. 19. Vedan and Javan from Uzal gave wrought iron for thy sales; cassia and calamus were for thy barter. Ver. 20. Vedan was thy merchant in cloths spread for riding. Ver. 21. Arabia and all the princes of Kedar, they were at thy hand for commerce; lambs and rams and he-goats, in these they traded with thee. Ver. 22. The merchants of Sheba and Ragmah, they were thy merchants; with all kinds of costly spices and with all kinds of precious stones and gold they- paid for thy sales. Ver. 23. Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, Chilmad, were thy merchants; Ver. 24. They were thy merchants in splendid clothes, in purple and embroidered robes, and in treasures of twisted yarn, in wound and strong cords for thy wares. Ver. 25. The ships of Tarshish were thy caravans, thy trade, and thou wast filled and glorious in the heart of the seas. — The enumeration of the different peoples, lands, and cities, which carried on trade with Tyre, commences with Tarshish (Tartessus) in the extreme west, then turns to the north, passes through the different lands of Anterior Asia and the Mediterranean to the remotest north-east, and ends by mentioning Tarshish again, to round off the list. But the lands and peoples, which are mentioned in vers. 5-11 as furnishing produce and manufactures for the building of Tyre, viz. Egypt and the tribes of Northern Africa, are left out. — To avoid wearisome uniformity in the enumeration, Ezekiel has used interchangeably the synonymous words which the language possessed for trade, besides endeavouring to give life to the description by a variety of turns of expression. Thus SplRfe (vers. 12, 16, 18), TOb (ver. 21), and If* J™? (ver. 15), or TJJ ^JlP (ver. 21), are interchanged with T^n (vers. 13, 15, 17, 22, 24), Sjrfa'l (vers. 20, 23), and Vbvm (ver. 24); and, again, SRbj? JTU (vers. 12, 14, 22) or ^3#3 |nj (vers. 16, 19) with TITOD \n: (vers. 13, 17), and njn $n|(D3 (ver. 19), and Tps^'K ywn (ver. 15). The words ">nb, participle of ino, and OT, from fa"J, signify merchants, traders, who travel through different lands for purposes of trade. Tino, literally, the female trader; and n"JnP, literally, trade; then used as abstract for concrete, the tradesman or merchant. sl\ the travelling merchant. — "JJT, the female trader, a city carrying on trade. fTCHD, trade or a place of trade, a commercial town. O^taty (pluralet.) does not mean a place of trade, market, and profits (Gesenius and others); but according to its derivation from 3W, to leave, relinquish, literally, leaving or giving up, and as Gusset, has correctly explained it, " that which you leave with another in the place of something else which he has given up to you." Ewald, in accordance with this explanation, has adopted the very appropriate rendering Absatz, or sale.?ru Tj^UTV, with 3, or with a double accusative, literally, to make thy sale with something, i.e. to pay or to give, i.e. pay, something as an equivalent for the sale; '3TV3 jnj, to give something for the sale, or the goods to be sold. ^JJD, barter, goods bartered with fcD, to give bartered goods, or carry on trade by barter.
The following are the countries and peoples enumerated: — B^BHR, the Tyrian colony of Tarshish or Tariessus, in Ilispania Baetica, which was celebrated for its wealth in silver (Jer. x. 9), and, according to the passage before us, also supplied iron, tin, and lead (vid. Plin. Hist. nat. iii. 3 (4), xxxiii. 6 (31), xxxiv. 14 (41); Diod. Sic. v. 38). Further particulars concerning Tarshish are to be found in Movers, Phoeniz. II. 2, pp. 588 sqq., and II. 3, p. 36. — Javan, i.e. Jania, Greece or Greeks. — Tubal and Meshech are the Tibareni and Moschi of the ancients between the Black and Caspian Seas (see the comm. on Gen. x. 2). They supplied souls of men, i.e. slaves, and things in brass. The slave trade was carried on most vigorously by the Ionians and Greeks (see Joel iv. 6, from which we learn that the Phoenicians sold prisoners of war to them); and both Greeks and Romans drew their largest suplies and the best slaves from the Pontus (for proofs of this, see Movers, II. 3, pp. 81 seq.). It is probable that the principal supplies of brazen articles wrere furnished by the Tibareni and Moschi, as the Colchian mountains still contain an inexhaustible quantity of copper. In Greece, copper was found and wrought in Euboea alone; and the only other rich mines were in Cyprus (vid. Movers, II. 3, pp. 66, 67). — Ver. 14. " From the house of Togarmah they paid," i.e. they of the house of Togarmah paid. Togarmah is one of the names of the Armenians (see the comm. on Gen. x. 3); and Strabo (XI. 14. 9) mentions the wealth of Armenia in horses, whilst that in asses is attested by Herodotus (i. 194), so that we may safely infer that mules were also bred there. — Ver. 15. The sons of Dedan, or the Dedanites, are, no doubt, the Dedanites mentioned in Gen. x. 7 as descendants of Cush, who conducted the carrying trade between the Persian Gulf and Tyre, and whose caravans are mentioned in Isa. xxi. 13. Their relation to the Semitic Dedanites, who are evidently intended in ver. 20, and by the inhabitants of Dedan mentioned in connection with Edom in ch. xxv. 13 and Jer. xlix. 8, is involved in obscurity (see the comm. on Gen. x. 7). The combination with EKH d*>N and the articles of commerce which they brought to Tyre, point to a people of southern Arabia settled in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. The many D^K are the islands and coasts of Arabia on the Persian Gulf and Erythraean Sea.1 T1* rnhD, the commerce of thy hand, i.e. as ahstr. pro concr., those who were ready to thy hand as merchants. \W nfo"}£, ivory horns. This is the term applied to the elephants' tusks (shen) on account of their shape and resemblance to horns, just as Pliny [Hist. nat. xviii. 1) also speaks of cornua elephanti, although he says, in viii. 3 (4), that an elephant's weapons, which Juba calls cornua, are more correctly to be called denies.2 The air. \ey. CO^irij Keri D^srj, signifies efievoSj hebenum, ebony. The ancients obtained both productions partly from India, partly from Ethiopia (Plin. xii. 4 (8)). According to Dioscor. i. 130, the Ethiopian ebony was preferred to the Indian. "I2w-'K ^SFH, to return payment (see the comm. on Ps. lxxii. 10). — In ver. 16, J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Hitzig, and others read E'"!S for CHS, after the LXX. and Pesh., because Aram did not lie in the road from Dedan and the D^K to Israel (ver. 17), and it is not till ver. 18 that Ezekiel reaches Aram. Moreover, the corruption Dis for DHK could arise all the more readily from the simple fact that the defective form D'"W only occurs in Ezekiel (xxv. 14), and is altogether an extraordinary one. These reasons are undoubtedly worthy of consideration; still they are not conclusive, since the enumeration does not follow a strictly geographical
1 Movers (II. 3, pp. 303 sqq.) adduces still further evidence in addition to that given above, namely, that " unquestionable traces of the ancient name have been preserved in the region in which the ancient Dedanites are represented as living, partly on the coast in the names Attana, Attene, which have been modified according to well-known laws, — the former, a commercial town on the Persian Gulf, visited by Roman merchants (Plin. vi. 32, § 147); the latter, a tract of country opposite to the island of Tylos (Plin. I.e. § 49),— and partly in the islands of the Persian Gulf " (p. 304).
2 The Ethiopians also call ivory Kama nage, i.e. cornu cleplianti, and suppose that it is from horns, and not from tusks, that ivory comes (via1. Hiob Ludolph, Hist. Aeth. I. c. 10)
order, inasmuch as Damascus is followed in vers. 19 sqq. by many of the tribes of Southern Arabia, so that Aram might stand, as Havernick supposes, for Mesopotamian Aram, for which the articles mentioned in ver. 16 would be quite as suitable as for Edom, whose chief city Petra was an important place of commerce and emporium for goods. T.^W? 31, the multitude of thy works, thy manufactures. Of the articles of commerce delivered by Ditf, the red purple, embroidery, and pQ (the Aramaean name for byssus, which appears, according to Movers, to have originally denoted a species of cotton), favour Aram, particularly Babylonia, rather than Edom. For the woven fabrics of Babylonia were celebrated from the earliest times (vid. Movers, II. 3, pp. 260 sqq.); and Babylon was also the oldest and most important market for precious stones (vid. Movers, p. 266). ^ is the carbuncle (see the comm. on Ex. xxviii. 18). *^H?j probably the ruby; in any case, a precious stone of brilliant splendour (vid. Isa. liv. 12). niDfcOj corals or pearls (vid. Delitzsch on Job xxviii. 18). — Judah (ver. 17) delivered to Tyre wheat of Minnith, i.e. according to Judg. xi. 33, an Ammonitish place, situated, according to the Onomast., four Roman miles from Heshbon in the direction of Philadelphia. That Ammonitis abounded in wheat, is evident from 2 Chron. xxvii. 5, although the land of Israel also supplied the Tyrians with wheat (1 Kings v. 25). The meaning of the air. \ey. 333 cannot be definitely ascertained. The rendering confectionery is founded upon the Aramaean PJ3, deliciari, and the Chaldee translation, Nvip, i.e. KoXla, according to Hesychius, ra ifc fieXtTos TponydXia, or sweetmeats made from honey. Jerome renders it balsamum, after the fivpcov of the LXX.; and in Hitzig's opinion, Pannaga (literally, a snake) is a name used in Sanscrit for a sweet-scented wood, which was employed in medicine as a cooling and strengthening drug (?). Honey (from bees) and oil are well-known productions of Palestine. H'S is balsam; whether resina or the true balsam grown in gardens about Jericho (opobalsamum)^ it is impossible to decide
(see my Bill. Archdol. I. p. 38, and Movers, II. 3, pp. 220 soq.). Damascus supplied Tyre with wine of Chelbon. p3pn stili exists in the village of Helbdn, a place with many ruins, three hours and a half to the north of Damascus, in the midst of a valley of the same name, which is planted with vines wherever it is practicable, from whose grapes the best and most costly wine of the country is made (via1. Robinson, Biblical Researches). Even in ancient times this wine was so celebrated, that, according to Posidonius (in Athen. Deipnos. i. 22), the kings of Persia drank only Chalybonian wine from Damascus (vid, Strabo, XV. 3. 22). TV "»??, wool of dazzling whiteness; or, according to others, wool of Zachar, for which the Septuagint has epca i/c MlXtJtov, Milesian wool.1 — Ver. 19. Various explanations have been given of the first three words. i*J1 is not to be altered into IT), as it has been by Ewald, both arbitrarily and unsuitably with ver. 20 immediately following; nor is it to be rendered " and Dan." It is a decisive objection to this, that throughout the whole enumeration not a single land or people is introduced with the copula 1. Vedan, which may be compared with the Vaheb of Num. xxi. 14, a place also mentioned only once, is the name of a tribe and tract of land not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. Movers (p. 302) conjectures that it is the celebrated city of Aden (^Jlc). Javan is also the name of an Arabian place or tribe; and, according to a notice in the Kamus, it is a place in Yemen. Tuch (Genesis, p. 210) supposes it to be a Greek (Ionian) settlement, the founders of which had been led by their enterprising spirit to cross the land of Egypt into Southern Arabia. For the purpose of distinguishing this Arabian Javan from Greece itself, or in order to define it more precisely, /Ttyp is
1 According to Movers (II. 3, p. 269), ins is the Sicharia of Aethkus (Cosm. § 108): Sicharia regio, quae postea Nabathaea, nuncupatur, silvestris valde, ubi Ismaelitae emlnns, — an earlier name for the land of the Nabathaeans, who dwelt in olden time between Palestine and the Euphrates, and were celebrated for their wealth in flocks of sheep.
appended, which all the older translators have taken to be a proper name. According to the Masoretic pointing?f KB, the word is, no doubt, to be regarded as a participle Paal of?TN, in the sense of spun, from?TK, to spin. Bat apart from the fact that it would be a surprising thing to find spun goods mentioned in connection with the trade of the Arabian tribes, the explanation itself could not be sustained from the usage of the language • for there is nothing in the dialects to confirm the idea that bttf is a softened form of i>?y, inasmuch as they have all btv (Aram.) and Jkc (Arab.), and the Talmudic i>TK, texerey occurs first of all in the Gemara, and may possibly have been derived in the first instance from the Rabbinical rendering of our bxwxo by w spun." Even the fact that the word is written with Shurek is against this explanation rather than in its favour; and in all probability its origin is to be traced to the simple circumstance, that in vers. 12, 14, 16 the articles of commerce are always mentioned before Spifaty BT1J, and in this verse they would appear to be omitted altogether, unless they are covered by the word i?nND. But we can very properly take the following words TWy?na as the object of the first hemistich, since the Masoretic accentuation is founded upon the idea that 7T1ND is to be taken as the object here. We therefore regard?JWD as the only admissible pointing, and take PftK as a proper name, as in Gen. x. 27: " from Uzal" the ancient name of Sanaa, the subsequent capital of Yemen. The productions mentioned bear this out. Forged or wrought iron, by which Tuch (I.e. p. 260) supposes that sword-blades from Yemen are chiefly intended, which were celebrated among the Arabs as much as the Indian. Cassia and calamus (see the comm. on Ex. xxx. 23 and 24), two Indian productions, as Yemen traded with India from the very earliest times. — Dedan (ver. 20) is the inland people of that name, living in the neighbourhood of Edora (cf. ch. xxv. 13; see the comm. on ver. 15). They furnished K'Sh naa, tapetes straguli, cloths for spreading out, most likely costly riding-cloths, like the middim of Judg. v. 10.
3"$ and 1*Jg represent the nomad tribes of Central Arabia, the Bedouins. For y^V is never used in the Old Testament for the whole of Arabia; but, according to its derivation from n?"JV, a steppe or desert, simply for the tribes living as nomads in the desert (as in Isa. xiii. 20; Jer. iii. 2; cf. Ewald, Grammat. Arab, I. p. 5). Kedar, descended from Ishmael, an Arabian nomad tribe, living in the desert between Arabia Petraea and Babylonia, the Cedrei of Pliny (see the comm. on Gen. xxv. 13). They supplied lambs, rams, and he-goats, from the abundance of their flocks, in return for the goods obtained from Tyre. — Ver. 22. Next to these the merchants of Sheba and Bagmah (n9*H) are mentioned. They were Arabs of Cushite descent (Gen. x. 7) in south-eastern Arabia (Oma?i); for ""^iH, 'Pey/ia, was in the modern province of Oman in the bay of the same name in the Persian Gulf. Their goods were all kinds of spices, precious stones, and gold, in which southern Arabia abounded. Db3"73 pan, the chief or best of all perfumes (on this use of B>Vh, see the comm. on Ex. xxx. 23; Song of Sol. iv. 14), is most likely the genuine balsam, which grew in Yemen (Arabia felix), according to Diod. Sic. iii. 45, along with other costly spices, and grows there still; for Forskal found a shrub between Mecca and Medina, called Abu sham, which he believed to be the true balsam, and of which he has given a botanical account in his Flora Aeg. pp. 79, 80 (as Amyris opobalsamum), as well as of two other kinds. Precious stones, viz. onyx-stones, rubies, agates, and cornelians, are still found in the mountains of Hadramaut; and in Yemen also jaspers, crystals, and many good rubies (yid. Niebuhr, Descript. p. 125, and Seetzen in Zach's Monatl. Corresp. xix. p. 339). And, lastly, the wealth of Yemen in gold is too strongly attested by ancient writers to be called in question (cf. Bochart, Phal. II. 28), although this precious metal is not found there now. — In vers. 23, 24 the trade with Mesopotamia is mentioned. pn? the Carrhae of the Romans in north-western Mesopotamia (see the comm. on Gen. xi. 31), was situated at the crossing of the caravan-roads which intersect Mesopotamia; for it was at this point that the two caravan routes from Babylonia and the Delta of the Persian Gulf joined the old military and commercial road to Canaan (Movers, p. 247). The eastern route ran along the Tigris, where Calnehy the later Ktesiphon, was the most important commercial city. It is here called HjSa (Canneh), contracted from np?3 (see the comm. on Gen. x. 10; Amos vi. 2). The western route ran along the Euphrates, past the cities mentioned in ver. 23b.)°}V is not the Syrian, but the Mesopotamian Eden (2 Kings xix. 12; Isa. xxxvii. 12), the situation of which has not yet been determined, though Movers (p. 257) has sought for it in the Delta of the Euphrates and Tigris. The sinojular circumstance that the merchants of Sheba should be mentioned in connection with localities in Mesopotamia, which has given rise both to arbitrary alterations of the text and to various forced explanations, has been explained by Movers (p. 247 compared with p. 139) from a notice of Juba in Pliny's Hist. nat. xii. 17 (40), namely, that the Sabaeans, the inhabitants of the spice country, came with their goods from the Persian Gulf to Carrhae, where they held their yearly markets, and from which they were accustomed to proceed to Gabba (Gabala in Phoenicia) and Palestinian Syria. Consequently the merchants of Sabaea are mentioned as those who carried on the trade between Mesopotamia and Tyre, and are not unsuitably placed in the centre of those localities which formed the most important seats of trade on the two great commercial roads of Mesopotamia. Asshur and Chilmad, as we have already observed, were on the western road which ran along the Euphrates. "T£?3 has already been discovered by Boehart (Phal. I. 18) in the Charmande of Xenophon (Anab. i. 5. 10), and Sophaenetus (see Steph. Byz. s.v. Xapixavhrj), a large and wealthy city in a desert region " beyond the river Euphrates." The Asshur mentioned along with Chilmad, in the midst of purely commercial cities, cannot be the land of Assyria, but must be the emporium Sura (Movers, p. 252), the present
Essurieh, which stands upon the bank on this side of the Euphrates above Thapsacus and on the caravan route, which runs from Palmyra past Rusapha (Rezeph, Isa. xxxvii. 12; 2 Kings xix. 12) to Nicephorium or Rakka, then in a northerly direction to Haran, and bending southwards, runs along the bank of the river in the direction of Chilmad or Charmande (Ritter, Erdh. XI. pp. 1081 sqq.). The articles of commerce from these emporia, which were brought to Tyre by Sabaean caravans, consisted of D^3®, literally, articles of perfect beauty, either state-dresses (cf. K^P, ch. xxiii. 12 and xxxiv. 4), or more generally, costly works of art (Havernick). The omission of the copula 1 before ^733 is decisive in favour of the former, as we may infer from this that 733 is intended as an explanatory apposition to CT77DD. nDjTJ iron "W3, cloaks (D173 connected with ^Xa/^s) of hyacinth-purple and embroidery, for which Babylonia was celebrated (for proofs of this, see Movers, pp. 258 sqq.). The words which follow cannot be explained with certainty. All that is evident is, that Ey?H3 '"iNl '3n is appended to D^i"i3 \W3 without a copula, as 'W ""OviS is to Dv73D3 in the first hemistich, and therefore, like the latter, is intended as an explanatory apposition. &73n does not mean either cloths or threads, but lines or cords. B^'lin signifies literally bound or wound up; probably twisted, i.e. formed of several threads wound together or spun; and 0*rj$, firm,
'til D^Di"i3 can hardly have any other meaning than treasures of spun yarns, i.e. the most valuable yarns formed of different threads. For " treasures " is the only meaning which can be assigned to D*H3 with any certainty on philological grounds, and Diana, from D"]3, *j, contorsit, is either yarn spun from several or various threads, or cloth woven from such threads. But the latter would not harmonize with D y3n. Movers (II. 3, pp. 263 sqq.) adopts a similar conclusion, and adduces evidence that silk yarn, bombyx, and cotton came to Tyre through the Mesopotamian trade, and were there dyed in the splendid Tyrian purples, and woven into cloths, or brought for sale with the dyeing complete. All the other explanations which have been given of these difficult words are arbitrary and untenable; not only the Rabbinical rendering of D^hn 733, viz. chests of damask, but that of Ewald, " pockets of damask," and that proposed by Hartmann, Hiivernick, and others, viz. girdles of various colours, l^wvai o-klcdtcll. In ver. 25 the description is rounded off with a notice of the lever of this worldwide trade. T\YW cannot mean " walls" in this instance, as in Jer. v. 10, and like niTW in Job xxiv. 11, because the ships, through which Tyre became so rich, could not be called walls. The word signifies "caravans," after "irc;=:jL> (Isa. lvii. 9), corresponding to the Aramaean N"}^. "n?"^!*? might be regarded as an accusative of more precise definition: caravans, with regard to (for) thy bartering trade. At the same time it is more rhetorical to take *I5!$?D as a second predicate: they were thy trade, i.e. the carriers of thy trade. What the caravans were for the emporia of trade on the mainland, the ships of Tarshish were for Tyre, and these on the largest sea-going ships are mentioned instar omnium. By means of these vessels Tyre was filled with goods, and rendered weighty p??-)> i.e. rich and glorious. — But a tempest from the east would destroy Tyre with all its glory.
Vers. 26-36. Destruction of Tyre. — Yer. 26. Thy rowers brought thee into great waters: the east wind broke thee wp in the heart of the seas. Yer. 27. Thy riches and thy sales, thy bartering wares, thy seamen and thy sailors, the repairers of thy leaks and the traders in thy wares, and all thy fighting men in thee, together with all the multitude of people in thee, fell into the heart of the seas in the day of thy fall. Yer. 28. At the noise of the cry of thy sailors the places tremble. Yer. 29. And. out of their ships come all the oarsmen, seamen, all the sailors of the sea; they come upon the land, Yer. 30. And make their voice heard over thee, and cry bitterly, and put dust upon their heads, and cover themselves with ashes; Ver. 31. And shave themselves bald on thy account, and gird on sackcloth, and weep for thee in anguish of soul a bitter wailing. Ver. 32. They raise over thee in their grief a lamentation, and lament over thee: Who is like Tyre! like the destroyed one in the midst of the sea! Ver. 33. When thy sales came forth out of the seas, thou didst satisfy many nations; with the abundance of thy goods and thy wares thou didst enrich kings of the earth. Ver. 34. Now that thou art wrecked away from the seas in the depths of the water, thy wares and all thy company are fallen in thee. Ver. 35. All the inhabitants of the islands are amazed at thee, and their kings shudder greatly; their faces quiver. Ver. 36. The traders among the nations hiss over thee; thou hast become a terror, and art gone for ever. — The allusion to the ships of Tarshish, to which Tyre was indebted for its glory, serves as an introduction to a renewal in ver. 26 of the allegory of vers. 5— 9a; Tyre is a ship, which is wrecked by the east wind (cf. Ps. xlviii. 8). In Palestine (Arabia and Syria) the east wind is characterized by continued gusts; and if it rises into a tempest, it generally causes great damage on account of the violence of the gusts (see Wetzstein in Delitzsch's commentary on Job xxvii. 1). Like a ship broken in pieces by the storm, Tyre with all its glory sinks into the depths of the sea. The repetition of DW 3?n in vers. 26 and 27 forms an effective contrast to ver. 25; just as the enumeration of all the possessions of Tyre, which fall with the ship into the heart of the sea, does to the wealth and glory in ver. 25b. They who manned the ship also perish with the cargo, — " the seamen," i.e. sailors, rowers, repairers of leaks (calkers), also the merchants on board, and the fighting men who defended the ship and its goods against pirates, — the whole qdhdl, or gathering of people, in the ship. The difficult expression sjjnpvaa can only be taken as an explanatory apposition to "H3 "IBW: all the men who are in thee, namely, in the multitude of people in thee. Ver. 28. When the vessel is wrecked, the managers of the ship raise such a cry that the migreshOth tremble. BH30 is used in Num. xxxv. 2 for the precincts around the Levitical cities, which were set apart as pasture ground for the flocks; and in Ezek. xlv. 2, xlviii. 17, for the ground surrounding the holy city. Consequently ntsnao cannot mean the suburbs of Tyre in the passage before us, but must signify the open places on the mainland belonging to Tyre, i.e. the whole of its territory, with the fields and villages contained therein. The rendering " fleet," which Ewald follows the Vulgate in adopting, has nothing to support it. — Vers. 29 sqq. The rain of this wealthy and powerful metropolis of the commerce of the world produces the greatest consternation among all who sail upon the sea, so that they forsake their ships, as if they wrere no longer safe in them, and leaving them for the land, bewail the fall of Tyre with deepest lamentation. T^ln with?ipa, as in Ps. xxvi. 7; 1 Chron. xv. 19, etc. For the purpose of depicting the lamentation as great and bitter in the extreme, Ezekiel groups together all the things that were generally done under such circumstances, viz. covering the head with dust (cf. Josh. vii. 6; 1 Sam. iv. 12; and Job ii. 12) and ashes (^?snn, to strew, or cover oneself, not to roll oneself: see the comm. on Mic. i. 10); shaving a bald place (see ch. vii. 18 and the comm. on Mic. i. 16); putting on sackcloth; loud, bitter weeping (fc;M "»D3j as in Job vii. 11 and x. 1); and singing a mournful dirge (vers. 32 sqq.). Drnzi, in lamento eorum; ^ contracted from VO (Jer. ix. 17, 18; cf. '»?, ch. ii. 10). The reading adopted by the LXX., Theodot., Syr., and eleven Codd. (Dn^3) is unsuitable, as there is no allusion to sons, but the seamen themselves raise the lamentation. The correction proposed by Hitzig, E'T^n, is altogether inappropriate. The exclamation, Who is like Tyre! is more precisely defined by n^3, like the destroyed one in the midst of the sea. HIM, participle Pual, with the B dropt, as in 2 Kings ii. 10, etc. (v'td. Ges. § 52. 2, Anm. 6). It is quite superfluous to assume that there was a noun ne'i signifying destruction. '21V HSV2 has been aptly explained by Hitzig: " inasmuch as thy wares sprang out of the sea, like the plants and field-fruits out of the soil " (the selection of the word ^Vli^n also suggested this simile); u not as being manufactured at Tyre, and therefore in the sea, but because the sea floated the goods to land for the people in the ships, and they satisfied the desire of the purchasers." Tyre satisfied peoples and enriched kings with its wares, not only by purchasing from them and paying for their productions with money or barter, but also by the fact that the Tyrians gave a still higher value to the raw material by the labour which they bestowed upon them. SJ^in in the plural is only met with here. — Ver. 34. But now Tyre with its treasures and its inhabitants has sunk in the depths of the sea. The antithesis in which ver. 34 really stands to ver. 33 does not warrant our altering maiJO Tty into rTQKO fij? as Ewald and
Hitzig propose, or adopting a different division of the second hemistich. T\V is an adverbial accusative, as in ch. xvi. 57: " at the time of the broken one away from the seas into the depth of the waters, thy wares and thy people have fallen, i.e. perished.'' rn3^ W, tempore quo fracta es. MW? 1TO&9 is intentionally selected as an antithesis to D^O T\2Z^ in ch. xxvi. 17. — Ver. 35. All the inhabitants of the islands and their kings, i.e. the inhabitants of the (coast of the) Mediterranean and its islands, will be thrown into consternation at the fall of Tyre; and (ver. 36) the merchants among the nations, i.e. the foreign nations, the rivals of Tyre in trade, will hiss thereat; in other words, give utterance to malicious joy. B£^, to be laid waste, or thrown into perturbation with terror and amazement. B^Q DJT], to tremble or quiver in the face, i.e. to tremble so much that the terror shows itself in the countenance. — In ver. 36/> Ezekiel brings the lamentation to a close in a similar manner to the threat contained in ch. xxvi. (vid. ch. xxvi. 21).
As tin.' citv of Tviv was first of all threatened with destruction (ch. KXVl.), and then lier fall was confirmed by a lamentation (ch. xxvii.), 80 hero the prince of Tyre is first of all forewarned of his approaching death (vers. 1-10), and then a lamentation is composed thereon (vers. 11-19),
Vers. 1-10. Fall of the Prince of Tyre. — Vcr. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Xcv. 2. Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Tlius saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thy heart has lifted itself np, and thou sayest, u I am a God, I sit upon a seat of God<, in (he heart of (he seas" when (lion art a man and not God, and cherishest a mind like a God's mind, Ver. 3. Behold^ thou art wiser than Daniel; nothing secret is obscure to thee; Ver. 4. Through thy wisdom and thy understanding hast thou acquired might, and put gold and silver in thy treasuries; Ver. 5. Through the greatness of thy wisdom hast thou increased thy might by thy trade, and thy heart has lifted itself up on account of thy miglit, Ver. 6. Therefore thus saith the Jjord Jehovah, Because thou ckerishest a mind like a God's mind, Ver. 7. Therefore, behold, I will bring foreigners upon thee, violent men of the nations; they will draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and pollute thy splendour. Ver. 8. They will cast thee down into the pit, that thou mayest die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas. Ver. 9. Wilt thou indeed sayy I am a God, in the face of him that slayeth thee, when thou art a man and not God, in the hand of him that killeth thee? Ver. 10. Thou wilt die the death of the uncircumcised at the hand of foreigners; for I have spoken it, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — This threat of judgment follows in general the same course as those addressed to other nations (compare especially ch. xxv.), namely, that the sin is mentioned first (vers. 2-5), and then the punishment consequent upon the sin (vers. 6-10). In ver. 12 "H/O is used instead of Ti3, dux. In the use of the term TJJ to designate the kinir,
Kliefoth detects an indication of the peculiar position occupied by the prince in the commercial state of Tyre, which had been reared upon municipal foundations; inasmuch as he was not so much a monarch, comparable to the rulers of Babylon or to the Pharaohs, as the head of the great mercantile aristocracy. This is in harmony with the use of the word T?J for the prince of Israel, David for example, whom God chose and anointed to be the ndgid over His people; in other words, to be the leader of the tribes, who also formed an independent commonwealth (vid. 1 Sam. xiii. 14; 2 Sam. vii. 8, etc.). The pride of the prince of Tyre is described in ver. 2 as consisting in the fact that he regarded himself as a God, and his seat in the island of Tyre as a God's seat. He calls his seat Dwj* 2&\D9 not u because his capital stood out from the sea, like the palace of God from the ocean of heaven" (Ps. civ. 3), as Hitzig supposes; for, apart from any other ground, this does not suit the subsequent description of his seat as God's mountain (ver. 16), and God's holy' mountain (ver. 14). The God's seat and God's mountain are not the palace of the king of Tyre, but Tyre as a state, and that not because of its firm position upon a rocky island, but as a holy island (ayta vrj<ro$, as Tyre is called in Sanchun. ed. Orelli, p. 36), the founding of which has been glorified by myths (vid. Movers, Phoenizier, I. pp. 637 sqq.). The words which Ezekiel puts into the mouth of the king of Tyre may be explained, as Kliefoth has well expressed it, " from the notion lying at the foundation of all natural religions, according to which every state, as the production of its physical factors and bases personified as the native deities of house and state, is regarded as a wrork and sanctuary of the gods." In Tyre especially the national and political development went hand in hand with the spread and propagation of its religion. u The Tyrian state was the production and seat of its gods. He, the prince of Tyre, presided over this divine creation and divine seat; therefore he, the prince, was himself a god, a manifestation of the deity, having its work and home in the state of Tyre." All heathen rulers looked upon themselves in this light; so that the king of Babylon is addressed in a similar manner in Isa. xiv. 13, 11. This self-deification is shown to be a delusion in ver. 2o; He who is only a man makes his heart like a God'l heart, i.e. cherishes the same thought as the Gods. 3J, the heart, as the seat of the thoughts and imaginations, is named instead of the disposition. This is carried out still further in vers. 3-5 by a description of the various sour from which this imagination sprang, lie cherishes a God's mind, because he attributes to himself superhuman wisdom, through which he has created the greatness, and might, and wealth of Tyre. The words, c* behold, thou art wiser," etc. ( ver. 3), are not to be taken as a question, "art thou indeed wiser?" as they have been by the LXX., Syriac, and others; nor are 'they ironical, as Ilavernick supposes; but they are to be taken literally, namely, inasmuch as the prince of Tyre was serious in attributing to himself supernatural and divine wisdom. Thou art, i.e. thou regardest thyself as being, wiser than Daniel. No hidden thing is obscure to thee (BEV, a later word akin to the Aramaean, u to be obscure"). The comparison with Daniel refers to the fact that Daniel surpassed all the magi and wise men of Babylon in wisdom through his ability to interpret dreams, since God gave him an insight into the nature and development of the power of the world, such as no human sagacity could have secured. The wisdom of the prince of Tyre, on the other hand, consisted in the cleverness of the children of this world, which knows how to get possession of all the good things of the earth. Through such wisdom as this had the Tyrian prince acquired power and riches, ^n, might, possessions in the broader sense; not merely riches, but the whole of the might of the commercial state of Tyre, which was founded upon riches and treasures got by trade. In ver. 5 ^nkna is in apposition to ^5?? ^13, and is introduced as explanatory. The fulness of its wisdom showed itself in its commerce and the manner in which it conducted it, wdiereby Tyre had become rich and powerful. It is not till we reach ver. 6 that we meet with the apodosis answering to 'til naa |JT in ver. 2, which has been pushed so far back by the intervening parenthetical sentences in vers. 26-5. For this reason the sin of the prince of Tyre in deifying himself is briefly reiterated in the clause ]Vl '\X\ ^rin (ver. 66, compare ver. 26), after which the announcement of the punishment is introduced with a repetition of!?? in ver. 7. Wild foes approaching with barbarous violence will destroy all the king's resplendent glory, slay the king himself with the sword, and hurl him down into the pit as a godless man. The enemies are called Dia T")?, violent ones of the peoples, — that is to say, the wild hordes composing the Chaldean army (cf. ch. xxx. 11, xxxi. 12). They drew the sword " against the beauty ("©*, the construct state of HB*) of thy wisdom," i.e. the beauty produced by thy wisdom, the beautiful Tyre itself, with all that it contains (ch. xxvi. 3, 4). Hjav splendour; it is only here and in ver. 17 that we meet with it as a noun. The king himself they hurl down into the pit, i.e. the grave, or the nether world, ^n *niBD, the death of a pierced one, substantially the same as xshn£ *ni». The plural tfltotp and VliD here and Jer. xvi. 4 (mortes) is a pluralis exaggerative, a death so painful as to be equivalent to dying many times (see the comm. on Isa. liii. 9). In ver. 9 Ezekiel uses the Piel!&?*? in the place of the Poel ^nP, as W>n in the Piel occurs elsewhere only in the sense of profanare, and in Isa. li. 9 the Poel is used for piercing. But there is no necessity to alter the pointing in consequence, as we also find the Pual used by Ezekiel in ch. xxxii. 26 in the place of the Pool of Isa. liii. 5. The death of the uncircumcised is such a death as godless men die — a violent death. The king of Tyre, who looks upon himself as a god, shall perish by the sword like a godless man. At the same time, the whole of this threat applies, not to the one king, Ithobal, who was reigning at the time of the siege of Tyre by the Chaldeans, but to the king as the founder and creator of the might of Tyre (vers. 3-5), i.e. to the supporter of that royalty which was to perish along with Tyre itself. — It is to the king, as the representative of the might and glory of Tyre, and not merely to the existing possessor of the regal dignity, that the following lamentation over his fall refers.
Vers. 11-19. Lamentation over the King of Tyre. — Ver. 11. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 12. Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Thou seal of a well- measured building, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Ver. 13. In Eden, the garden of God, wast thou; all kinds of precious stones were thy covering, cornelian, topaz, and diamond, chrysolit % beryl, and jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald, and gold: the service of thy timbrels and of thy women was with thee; on the day that thou wast created, they were prepared. Ver. 14. Thou wast a cherub of anointing, xvliich covered, and I made thee for it; thou wast on a holy mountain of God; thou didst walk in the midst of fiery stones. Ver. 15. Thou wast innocent in thy ivays from the day on which thou wast created, until iniquity was found in thee. Ver. 16. On account of the multitude of thy commerce, thine inside icas filed with wrong, and thou didst sin: I will therefore profane thee away from the mountain of God; and destroy thee, 0 covering cherub, away from the fiery stones! Ver. 17. Thy heart has lifted itself up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy ivisdom together with thy splendour: I cast thee to the ground, I give thee up for a spectacle before kings. Ver. 18. Through the multitude of thy sins in thine unrighteous trade thou hast prof an ed thy holy places; I therefore cause fire to proceed from the midst of thee, which shall devour thee, and make thee into ashes upon the earth before the eyes of all who see thee. Ver. 19. All who know thee among the peoples are amazed at thee: thou hast become a tensor, and art gone for ever. — The lamentation over the fall of the king of Tyre commences with a picture of the super-terrestrial glory of his position, so as to correspond to his self-deification as depicted in the foregoing word of God. In ver. 12 he is addressed as IWaiJ Dn'n. This does not mean, "artistically wrought signet-ring;" for Dnn does not stand for Enn, but is a participle of Dnn, to seal. There is all the more reason for adhering firmly to this meaning, that the following predicate, n??n *£?» *s altogether inapplicable to a signet-ring, though Hitzig once more scents a corruption of the text in consequence. ^33Fl, from J3H, to weigh, or measure off, does not mean perfection (Ewald), beauty (Ges.), fagon (Hitzig), or symmetry (Hiivernick); but just as in ch. xliii. 10, the only other passage in which it occurs, it denotes the measured and well-arranged building of the temple, so here it signifies a well-measured and artistically arranged building, namely, the Tyrian state in its artistic combination of well-measured institutions (Kliefoth). This building is sealed by the prince, inasmuch as he imparts to the state firmness, stability, and long duration, when he possesses the qualities requisite for a ruler. These are mentioned afterwards, namely, " full of wisdom, perfect in beauty." If the prince answers to his position, the wisdom and beauty manifest in the institutions of the state are simply the impress received from the wisdom and beauty of his own mind. The prince of Tyre possessed such a mind, and therefore regarded himself as a God (ver. 2). His place of abode, which is described in vers. 13 and 14, corresponded to his position. Ezekiel here compares the situation of the prince of Tyre with that of the first man in Paradise; and then, in vers, 15 and 16, draws a comparison between his fall and the fall of Adam. As the first man was placed in the garden of God, in Eden, so also was the prince of Tyre placed in the midst of paradisaical glory. HJf is shown, by the apposition Hwgj |3, to be used as the proper name of Paradise; and this view is not to be upset by the captious objection of Hitzig, that Eden was not the garden of God, but that this wras situated in Eden (Gen. ii. 8). The fact that Ezekiel calls Paradise HV"!? in ch. xxxvi. 35, proves nothing more than that the terms Eden and Garden of
God do not cover precisely the same ground, inasmuch as the garden of God only occupied one portion of Eden. But notwithstanding this difference, Ezekiel could use the two expressions as synonymous, just as well as Isaiah (Isa. li. 3). And even if any one should persist in pressing the difference, it would not follow that \}V2 was corrupt in this passage, as Hitzig fancies, but simply that D\"6x p defined the idea of \*}V more precisely — in other words, restricted it to the garden of Paradise. There is, however, another point to be observed in connection with this expression, namely, that the epithet D\-6n p is used here and in ch. xxxi. 8, 9; whereas, in other places, Paradise is called HIPP p (irid. Isa. li. 3; Gen. xiii. 10). Ezekiel has chosen Elohim instead of Jehovah, because Paradise is brought into comparison, not on account of the historical significance which it bears to the human race in relation to the plan of salvation, but simply as the most glorious land in all the earthly creation. The prince of Tyre, placed in the pleasant land, was also adorned with the greatest earthly glory. Costly jewels were his coverings, that is to say, they formed the ornaments of his attire. This feature in the pictorial description is taken from the splendour with which Oriental rulers are accustomed to appear, namely, in robes covered with precious stones, pearls, and gold. n|?P, as a noun air. Xey., signifies a covering. In the enumeration of the precious stones, there is no reference to the breastplate of the high priest. For, in the first place, the order of the stones is a different one here; secondly, there are only nine stones named instead of twelve; and lastly, there would be no intelligible sense in such a reference, so far as we can perceive. Both precious stones and gold are included in the glories of Eden (vid. Gen. ii. 11, 12). For the names of the several stones, see the commentary on Ex. xxviii. 17-20. The words 'Ul *p«J n?^1?— which even the early translators have entirely misunderstood, and which the commentators down to Hitzig and Ewald have made marvellous attempts to explain — present no peculiar difficulty, apart from the plural *p3p3, which is only met with here. As the mean in g timbrels, tambourins (advffa), is well established for Q'Sfl, and in 1 Sam. x. 5 and Isa. v. 12 flutes are mentioned along with the timbrels, it has been supposed by some that E^iJ? must signify flutes here. But there is nothing to support such a rendering either in the Hebrew or in the other Semitic dialects. On the other hand, the meaning pala gemmarum (Vulgate), or ring-casket, has been quite arbitrarily forced upon the word by Jerome, Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, and many others. We agree with Hiivernick in regarding MiJJ as a plural of H3p3 (foeminae), formed, like a masculine, after the analogy of D'CO, D^^s etc., and account for the choice of this expression from the allusion to the history of the creation (Gen. i. 27). The service (n3S?p? performance, as in Gen. xxxix. 11, etc.) of the women is the leading of the circular dances by the odalisks who beat the timbrels: " the harem-pomp of Oriental kings." This was made ready for the king on the day of his creation, i.e. not his birthday, but the day on which he became king, or commenced his reign, when the harem of his predecessor came into his possession with all its accompaniments. Ezekiel calls this the day of his creation, with special reference to the fact that it was God who appointed him king, and with an allusion to the parallel, underlying the whole description, between the position of the prince of Tyre and that of Adam in Paradise.1 The next verse (ver. 14) is a more difficult one. AN is an abbreviation of fiN? nFiN, as in Num. xi. 15; Deut. v. 24 (see Ewald, § 184a). The air. Xey. nc'ED has been explained in very different ways, but mostly according to the Vulgate rendering,
1 In explanation of the fact alluded to, Hiivernick has very appropriately called attention to a passage of Athen. (xii. 8, j). 531), in which the following btatement occurs with reference to Strato, the Sidonian king: " Strato, with flute-girls, and female harpers and players on the cithara, made preparations for the festivities, and sent for a large number of hetaerae from the Peloponnesus, and many singing-girls from Ionia, and young hetaerae from the whole of Greece, both singers and dancers." See also other passages in Brissonius, de regio Pen. pvinc. pp. 142-3.
tu Cherub extentus et proteyens, as signifying spreading out or extension, in the sense of "with outspread wings" (Gesenius and many others). Bat n^'p does not mean either to spread out or to extend. The general meaning of the word is simply to anoint; and judging from nncp and n™?9> portio, Lev. vii. 35 and Num. xviii. 8, also to measure off, from which the idea of extension cannot possibly be derived. Consequently the meaning " anointing " is the only one that can be established with certainty in the case of the word ntypp. So far as the form is concerned, HB'DO might be in the construct state; but the connection with s|DlBn, anointing, or anointed one, of the covering one, does not yield any admissible sense. A comparison with ver. 16, where ^?iDn 3VG occurs again, will show that the nrpPj which stands between these two words in the verse before us, must contain a more precise definition of 3nz>5 and therefore is to be connected with 3T13 in the construct state: cherub of anointing, i.e. anointed cherub. This is the rendering adopted by Kliefoth, the only commentator who has given the true explanation of the verse, n^'pp is the older form, which has only been retained in a few words, such as DCnp in Isa. x. 6, together with the tone-lengthened a (yid. Ewald, § 160a). The prince of Tyre is called an anointed cherub, as Ephraem Syrus has observed, because he was a kin£ even though he had not been anointed. SpiDH is not an abstract noun, either here or in Nan. ii. 6, but a participle; and this predicate points back to Ex. xxv. 20, " the cherubim covered (D^DiD) the capporeth with their wings," and is to be explained accordingly. Consequently the king of Tyre is called a cherub, because, as an anointed king, he covered or overshadowed a sanctuary, like the cherubim upon the ark of the covenant. What this sanctuary was is evident from the remarks already made at ver. 2 concerning the divine seat of the king. If the u seat of God," upon which the king of Tyre sat, is to be understood as signifying the state of Tyre, then the sanctuary which he covered or overshadowed as a cherub will also be the Tyrian state, with its holy places and sacred things. In the next clause, 1WW is to be taken by itself according to the accents, " and I have made thee (so)," and not to be connected with BHp 1H3. We are precluded from adopting the combination which some propose — viz. " I set thee upon a holy mountain; thou wast a God " — by the incongruity of first of all describing the prince of Tyre as a cherub, and then immediately afterwards as a God, inasmuch as, according to the Biblical view, the cherub, as an angelic being, is simply a creature and not a God; and the fanciful delusion of the prince of Tyre, that he was an El (ver. 2), could not furnish the least ground for his being addressed as Elohim by Ezekiel. And still more are we precluded from taking the words in this manner by the declaration contained in ver. 16, that Jehovah will cast him out " from the mountain of Elohim," from which we may see that in the present verse also Elohim belongs to har, and that in ver. 16, where the mountain of God is mentioned again, the predicate BHp is simply omitted for the sake of brevity, just as n^'ED is afterwards omitted on the repetition of T]DiBn lira. The missing but actual object to T^™ can easily be supplied from the preceding clause, — namely, this, i.e. an overshadowing cherub, had God made him, by placing him as king in paradisaical glory. The words, a thou wast upon a holy mountain of God," are not to be interpreted in the sense suggested by Isa. xiv. 13, namely, that Ezekiel was thinking of the mountain of the gods (Alborj) met with in Asiatic mythology, because it was there that the cherub had its home, as Hitzig and others suppose; for the Biblical idea of the cherub is entirely different from the heathen notion of the griffin keeping guard over gold. It is true that God placed the cherub as guardian of Paradise, but Paradise was not a mountain of God, nor even a mountainous land. The idea of a holy mountain of God, as being the seat of the king of Tyre, was founded partly upon the natural situation of Tyre itself, built as it was upon one or two rocky islands of the Mediterranean, ami partly upon the heathen notion of the sacredness of this island as the seat of the Deity, to which the Tynans attributed the grandeur of their state. To this we may probably add a reference to Mount Zion, upon which was the sanctuary, where the cherub covered the seat of the presence of God. For although the comparison of the prince of Tyre to a cherub was primarily suggested by the description of his abode as Paradise, the epithet 1^3? shows that the place of the cherub in the sanctuary was also present to the prophet's mind. At the same time, we must not understand by Bh£ "»n Mount Zion itself. The last clause, u thou didst walk in the midst of (among) fiery stones," is very difficult to explain. It is admitted by nearly all the more recent commentators, that " stones of fire " cannot be taken as equivalent to " every precious stone" '(ver. 13), both because the precious stones could hardly be called stones of fire on account of their brilliant splendour, and also being covered with precious stones is not walking in the midst of them. Nor can we explain the words, as Havernick has done, from the account given by Herodotus (II. 44) of the two emerald pillars in the temple of Hercules at Tyre, which shone resplendently by night; for pillars shining by night are not stones of fire, and the king of Tyre did not walk in the temple between these pillars. The explanation given by Hofmann and Kliefoth appears to be the correct one, namely, that the stones of fire are to be regarded as a wall of fire (Zech. ii. 9), which rendered the cherubic king of Tyre unapproachable upon his holy mountain.
In ver. 15, the comparison of the prince of Tyre to Adam in Paradise is brought out still more prominently. As Adam was created sinless, so was the prince of Tyre innocent in his conduct in the day of his creation, but only until perverseness was found in him. As Adam forfeited and lost the happiness conferred upon him through his fall, so did the king of Tyre forfeit his glorious position through unrighteousness and sin, and cause God to cast him from his eminence down to the ground.
lie fell into perverseness in consequence of the abundance of his trade (ver. 16a). Because his trade lifted him up to wealth and power, his heart was filled with iniquity, TO for ^pjp, like fop for tibo in ch. xli. 8, and «W for WlM in ch. xxxix. 26. laifl is not the subject, but the object to w; and the plural TO, with an indefinite subject, " they filled," is chosen in the place of the passive construction, because in the Hebrew, as in the Aramaean, active combinations are preferred to passive whenever it is possible to adopt them (vid. Ewald, § 2946 and 1286). N?D is used by Ezekiel in the transitive sense "to fill" (ch. viii. 17 and xxx. 11). ^ilj, the midst, is used for the interior in a physical sense, and not in a spiritual one; and the expression is chosen with an evident allusion to the history of the fall. As Adam sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree, so did the king of Tyre sin by filling himself with wickedness in connection with trade (Hiivernick and Kliefoth). God would therefore put him away from the mountain of God, and destroy him. fen with IP is a pregnant expression: to desecrate away from, i.e. to divest of his glory and thrust away from. ^"GX} is a contracted form for *T!fKNJ (vid. Ewald, § 232A and § 72c). — Vers. 17 and 18 contain a comprehensive description of the guilt of the prince of Tyre, and the approaching judgment is still further depicted. 'WJJft 'V cannot mean, "on account of thy splendour," for this yields no appropriate thought, inasmuch as it was not the splendour itself which occasioned his overthrow, but the pride which corrupted the wisdom requisite to exalt the might of Tyre, — in other words, tempted the prince to commit iniquity in order to preserve and increase his glory. We therefore follow the LXX., Syr., Ros., and others, in taking py in the sense of una cum, together with. msi is an infinitive form, like ninx for nifcO, though Ewald (§ 238e) regards it as so extraordinary that he proposes to alter the text. «"IX"J with 3 is used for looking upon a person with malicious pleasure, I^r??"} ^W? shows in what the guilt (PV) consisted {/)V is the construct state of <W). The sanctuaries
(miqdushim) which the king of Tyre desecrated by the unrighteousness of his commerce, are not the city or the state of Tyre, but the temples which made Tyre a holy island. These the king desecrated by bringing about their destruction through his own sin. Several of the codices and editions read l^pp in the singular, and this is the reading adopted by the Chaldee, Syriac, and Vulgate versions. If this were the true reading, the sanctuary referred to would be the holy mountain of God (vers. 14 and 16). But the reading itself apparently owes its origin simply to this interpretation of the words. In the clause, u I cause fire to issue from the midst of thee," *|3faV? is to be understood in the same sense as ^pin in ver. 16. The iniquity which the king has taken into himself becomes a fire issuing from him, by which he is consumed and burned to ashes. All who know him among the peoples will be astonished at his terrible fall (ver. 19, compare ch. xxvii. 36).
If we proceed, in conclusion, to inquire into the fulfilment of these prophecies concerning Tyre and its king, wre find the opinions of modern commentators divided. Some, for example Hengstenberg, Havernick, Drechsler (on Isa. xxiii.), and others, assuming that, after a thirteen years' siege, Nebuchadnezzar conquered the strong Island Tyre, and destroyed it; while others — viz. Gesenius, Winer, Hitzig, etc. — deny the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, or at any rate call it in question; and many of the earlier commentators suppose the prophecy to refer to Old Tyre, which stood upon the mainland. For the history of this dispute, see Hengstenberg, De rebus Tyriorum comment. (Berol. 1832); Havernick, OnEzekiel, pp.420 sqq.; and Movers, Phoenizier, II. 1, pp. 427 sqq. — The denial of the conquest of Insular Tyre by the king of Babylon rests partly on the silence which ancient historians, who mention the sie^e itself, have maintained as to its result; and partly on the statement contained in Ezek. xxix. 17-20. — All that Josephus (Antt. x. 11. 1) is able to quote from the ancient historians on this point is the following: — In the first place, he states, on the authority of the third book of the Chaldean history of Berosus, that when the father of Nebuchadnezzar, on account of his own age and consequent infirmity, had transferred to his son the conduct of the war against the rebellious satrap in Egypt, Coelesyria, and Phoenicia, Nebuchadnezzar defeated him, and brought the whole country once more under his sway. But as the tidings reached him of the death of his father just at the same time, after arranging affairs in Egypt, and giving orders to some of his friends to lead into Babylon the captives taken from among the Judaeans, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, together with the heavy armed portion of the army, he himself hastened through the desert to Babylon, with a small number of attendants, to assume the government of the empire. Secondly, he states, on the authority of the Indian and Phoenician histories of Philostratus, that when Ithobal was on the throne, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. The accounts taken from Berosus are repeated by Josephus in his c. Apion (i. § 19), where he also adds (§ 20), in confirmation of their credibility, that there were writings found in the archives of the Phoenicians which tallied with the statement made by Berosus concerning the king of Chaldea (Nebuchadnezzar), viz. a that he conquered all Syria and Phoenicia; " and that Philostratus also agrees with this, since he mentions the siege of Tyre in his histories (jjLefivTjfjLivos tt}? Tvpov iroXiopicias). In addition to this, for synchronistic purposes, Josephus (c. Ap. i. 21) also communicates a fragment from the Phoenician history, containing not only the account of the thirteen years' siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Ithobal, but also a list of the kings of Tyre who followed Ithobal, down to the time of Cyrus of Persia.1 The siege of Tyre is
1 The passage reads as follows: "In the reign of Ithobal the king, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. After him judges were appointed. Ecnibalus, the son of Baslachus, judged for two months; Chelbes, the son of Abdaeus, for ten months; Abbarus, the high priest, for three months; Myttonus and Gerastartus, the sons of Abdelemus, for
thei mentioned three timet by Josephns, on the authority of Phoenician hist i: but he n< i r iys anything of the pest and destroction of that city bj N bachadnezsar. From this circumstance the conclusion has been drawn, thai this was all he fonnd there. For if, i: is said, the siege had terminated with the conquest of the city, this glorious result of the thirteen years' exertions could hardly have been pa over in silence, inasmuch as in AntL \. 11. 1 the testimony of foreign historians is quot< 1 to tl ( that Nebuchadnezzar was "an active man, and more fortunate than the kinos that were b im.'1 But the argument is more plausible than conclusive. If we bear in mind that B ro us Bimply relates the
-lint of a subjugation and devastation of the whole of PI nicia, without mentioning the siege of Tyre, and that it is only in Phoenician writings therefore that the latter is referred to, we cannot by any moans conclude, from their silence as to the result or termination of the siege, that it ended gloriously for the Tynans and with humiliation to Nebuchadnezzar, or that he was obliged to relinquish the attempt without success after the strenuous exertions of thirteen years. On the contrary, considering how all the historians of antiquity show the same anxiety, if not to pass over in silence such events as were unfavourable to their country, at all events to put them in as favourable a light as possible, the fact that the Tyrian historians observe the deepest silence as to the result of the thirteen years' siege of Tyre would rather force us to the conclusion that it was very humiliating to Tyre. And this could only be the case if Nebuchadnezzar really conquered Tyre at the end of thirteen years. If he had been obliged to relinquish the siege because he found himself unable to conquer so strong a city, the Tyrian historians would most assuredly have related
six years; after whom Balatorus reigned for one year. When he died, they sent for and fetched Merbalus from Babylon, and he reigned four years. At his death they sent for his brother Eiramus, who reigned twenty years. During his reign, Cyrus ruled over the Persians."
this termination of the thirteen years' strenuous exertions of the great and mighty king of Babylon.
The silence of the Tyrian historians concerning the conquest of Tyre is no proof, therefore, that it did not really take place. But Ezek. xxix. 17-20 has also been quoted as containing positive evidence of the failure of the thirteen years' siege; in other words, of the fact that the city was not taken. We read in this passage, that Nebuchadnezzar caused his army to perform hard service against Tyre, and that neither he nor his army received any recompense for it. Jehovah would therefore give him Egypt to spoil and plunder as wrages for this work of theirs in the service of Jehovah. Gesenius and Hitzig (on Isa. xxiii.) infer from this, that Nebuchadnezzar obtained no recompense for the severe labour of the siege, because he did not succeed in entering the city. But Movers (Ix. p. 448) has already urged in reply to this, that u the passage before us does not imply that the city wTas not conquered any more than it does the opposite, but simply lays stress upon the fact that it was not plundered. For nothing can be clearer in this connection than that wThat we are to understand by the wages, which Nebuchadnezzar did not receive, notwithstanding the exertions connected with his many years' siege, is simply the treasures of Tyre; " though Movers is of opinion that the passage contains an intimation that the siege was brought to an end with a certain compromise wdiich satisfied the Tynans, and infers, from the fact of stress being laid exclusively mpon the neglected plundering, that the termination was of such a kind that plundering might easily have taken place, and therefore that Tyre was either actually conquered, but treated mildly from wise considerations, or else submitted to the Chaldeans upon certain terms. But neither of these alternatives can make the least pretension to probability. In Ezek. xxix. 20 it is expressly stated that u as wages, for which he (Nebuchadnezzar) has worked, I give him the land of Egypt, because they (Nebuchadnezzar and his army) have done it for me;" in other words, have done the work for me. When, therefore, Jehovah promises to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as a reward or wages for the hard work which has been done for Him at Tyre, the words presuppose that Nebuchadnezzar had really accomplished against Tyre the task entrusted to him by. God. But God had committed to him not merely the siege, but also the conquest and destruction of Tyre. Nebuchadnezzar must therefore have executed the commission, though without receiving the expected reward for the labour which he had bestowed; and on that account God would compensate him for his trouble with the treasures of Egypt. This precludes not only the supposition that the siege was terminated, or the city surrendered, on the condition that it should not be plundered, but also the idea that for wise reasons Nebuchadnezzar treated the city leniently after he had taken possession. In either case Nebuchadnezzar would not have executed the will of Jehovah upon Tyre in such a manner as to be able to put in any claim for compensation for the hard work performed. The only thing that could warrant such a claim would be the circumstance, that after conquering Tyre he found no treasures to plunder. And this is the explanation which Jerome has given of the passage ad litteram. "Nebuchadnezzar," he says, " being
unable, when besieging Tyre, to bring up his battering-rams, besieging towers, and vineae close to the walls, on account of the city being surrounded by the sea, employed a very large number of men from his army in collecting rocks and piling up mounds of earth, so as to fill up the intervening sea, and make a continuous road to the island at the narrowest part of the strait. And when the Tyrians saw that the task was actually accomplished, and the foundations of the walls were being disturbed by the shocks from the battering-rams, they placed in ships whatever articles of value the nobility possessed in gold, silver, clothing, and household furniture, and transported them to the islands; so that when the city was taken, Nebuchadnezzar found nothing to compensate him for all his labour. And because he had done the will of God in all this, some years after the conquest of Tyre, Egypt was given to him by God."1
It is true that we have no historical testimony from any other quarter to support this interpretation. But we could not expect it in any of the writings which have come down to us, inasmuch as the Phoenician accounts extracted by Josephus simply contain the fact of the thirteen years' siege, and nothing at all concerning its progress and result. At the same time, there is the greatest probability that this was the case. If Nebuchadnezzar really besieged the city, which was situated upon an island in the sea, he could not have contented himself with cutting off the supply of drinking water from the city simply on the land side, as Shalmanezer, the king of Assyria, is said to have done (vid. Josephus, Antt. ix. 14.2), but must have taken steps to fill up the strait between the city and the mainland with a mound, that he might construct a road for besieging and assaulting the walls, as Alexander of Macedonia afterwards did. And the words of Ezek. xxix. 18, according to which every head was bald, and the skin rubbed off every shoulder with the severity of the toil, point indisputably to the undertaking of some such works as these. And if the Chaldeans really carried out their operations upon the city in this way, as the siege-works advanced, the Tyrians would not neglect any precaution to defend themselves as far as possible, in the event of the capture of the city. They would certainly send the possessions and treasures of the city by ship into the colonies, and thereby place them in security; just as, according to Curtius, iv. 3, they sent off their families to Carthage, when the city was besieged by Alexander.
This view of the termination of the Chaldean siege of Tyre receives a confirmation of no little weight from the fragment of Menander already given, relating to the succession of rulers in Tyre after the thirteen years' siege by Nebuchadnezzar. It is there stated that after Ithobal, Baal reigned for ten years,
1 Cyrill. Alex, gives the same explanation in his commentary on Isa. xxiii.
tli at judges (stiff etes) were then appointed, nearly all of whom held office for a few months only; that among the last judges there was also a king Balatorus, who reigned for a year; that after this, however, the Tyrians sent to Babylon, and brought thence Merbal, and on his death Iliram, as kings, whose genuine Tyrian names undoubtedly show that they were descendants of the old native royal family. This circumstance proves not only that Tyre became a Chaldean dependency in consequence of the thirteen years' siege by Nebuchadnezzar, but also that the Chaldeans had led away the royal family to Babylonia, which would hardly have been the case if Tyre had submitted to the Chaldeans by a treaty of peace.
If, however, after what has been said, no well-founded doubt can remain as to the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, our prophecy was not so completely fulfilled thereby, that Tyre became a bare rock on which fishermen spread their nets, as is threatened in ch. xxvi. 4, 5, 14. Even if Nebuchadnezzar destroyed its walls, and laid the city itself in ruins to a considerable extent, he did not totally destroy it, so that it w7as not restored. On the contrary, two hundred and fifty years afterwards, we find Tyre once more a splendid and powerful royal city, so strongly fortified, that Alexander the Great was not able to take it till after a siege of seven months, carried on with extraordinary exertions on the part of both the fleet and army, the latter attacking from the mainland by means of a mound of earth, which had been thrown up with considerable difficulty (Diod. Sic. xvii. 40 sqq.; Arrian, Alex. ii. 17 sqq.; Curtius, iv. 2-4). Even after this catastrophe it rose once more into a distinguished commercial city under the rule of the Seleucidae and afterwards of the Romans, who made it the capital of Phoenicia. It is mentioned as such a city in the New Testament (Matt. xv. 21; Acts xxi. 3, 7); and Strabo (xvi. 2. 23) describes it as a busy city with two harbours and very lofty houses. But Tyre never recovered its ancient grandeur. In the first centuries of the Christian era, it is frequently mentioned as an archbishop's see. From a.d. 636 to a.d. 1125 it was under the rule of the Saracens, and was so strongly fortified, that it was not till after a siege of several months' duration that they succeeded in taking it. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Tyre in the year 1060, describes it as a city of distinguished beauty, with a strongly fortified harbour, and surrounded by walls, and with the best glass and earthenware in the East. " Saladin, the conqueror of Palestine, broke his head against Tyre in the year 1189. But after Acre had been taken by storm in the year 1291 by the Sultan Ei-Ashraf, on the day following this conquest the city passed without resistance into the hands of the same Egyptian king; the inhabitants having forsaken Tyre by night, and fled by sea, that they might not fall into the power of such bloodthirsty soldiers " (Van de Velde). When it came into the hands of the Saracens once more, its fortifications were demolished; and from that time forward Tyre has never risen from its ruins again. Moreover, it had lonor ceased to be an insular city. The mound which Alexander piled up, grew into a broader and firmer tongue of land in consequence of the sand washed up by the sea, so that the island wras joined to the mainland, and turned into a peninsula. The present Sur is situated upon it, a market town of three or four thousand inhabitants, which does not deserve the name of a city or town. The houses are for the most part nothing but huts; and the streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty lanes. The ruins of the old Phoenician capital cover the surrounding country to the distance of more than half an hour's journey from the present town gate. The harbour is so thoroughly choked up with sand, and filled with the ruins of innumerable pillars and building stones, that only small boats can enter. The sea has swallowed up a considerable part of the greatness of Tyre; and quite as large a portion of its splendid temples and fortifications lie buried in the earth. To a depth of many feet the soil trodden at the present day is one solid mass of building stones, shafts of pillars, and rubbish composed of costly verde antiquo (green marble) also lie strewn about in large quantities. The crust, which forms the soil that is trodden to-day, is merely the surface of this general heap of ruins. Thus has Tyre actually become "a bare rock, and a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of sea;" and " the dwellingplaces, which are now erected upon a portion of its former site, are not at variance with the terrible decree, ' thou shalt be built no more'" (compare Robinson's Palestine, and Van de Velde's Travels). — Tims has the prophecy of Ezekiel been completely fulfilled, though not directly by Nebuchadnezzar; for the prophecy is not a bare prediction of historical details, but is pervaded by the idea of the judgment of God. To the prophet, Nebuchadnezzar is the instrument of the punitive righteousness of God, and Tyre the representative of the ungodly commerce of the world. Hence, as Hiivernick has already observed, Nebuchadnezzar's action is more than an isolated deed in the prophet's esteem. u In his conquest of the city he sees the whole of the ruin concentrated, which history places before us as a closely connected chain. The breaking of the power of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar stands out before his view as inseparably connected writh its utter destruction. This was required by the internal theocratic signification of the fact in its relation to the destruction of Jerusalem." Jerusalem will rise a^ain to new glory out of its destruction through the covenant faithfulness of God (ch. xxviii. 25, 26). But Tyre, the city of the world's commerce, which is rejoicing over the fall of Jerusalem, will pass away for ever (ch. xxvi. 14, xxvii. 36).
The threatening word against Sidon is very brief, and couched in general terms, because as a matter of fact the prophecy against Tyre involved the announcement of the fall of Sidon, which was dependent upon it; and, as we have already observed, Sidon received a special word of God simply for the purpose of making up the number of the heathen nations mentioned to the significant number seven. The wTord of God against Sidon brings to a close the cycle of predictions of judgment directed against those heathen nations w7hich had given expression to malicious pleasure at the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah. There is therefore appended a promise for Israel (vers-. 25, 26), wThich is really closely connected with the threatening words directed against the heathen nations, and for which the way is prepared by ver. 24. The correspondence of nn "flBHpJ (I shall be sanctified in her) in ver. 22 to' Dl *riK^j?3 (I shall be sanctified in them) in ver. 25, serves to place the future fate of Israel in antithesis not merely to the future fate of Sidon, but, as vers. 24 and 2Q clearly show, to that of all the heathen nations against which the previous threats have been directed.
Ver. 20. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 21. Son of man, direct thy face towards Sidon, and prophesy against it, Ver~ 22, And say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will he against thee, 0 Sidon, and will glorify myself in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when J execute judgments upon it, and sanctify myself upon it. Ver. 23. I will send pestilence into it, and blood into its streets; slain will fall in the midst of it by the sword, which cometh upon it from every side; and they shall learn that I am Jehovah. Ver. 24. And there shall be no more to the house of Israel a malignant thorn and smarting sting from all round about them, who despise them; but they shall learn that I am the Lord Jehovah. — Jehovah will glorify Himself as the Lord upon Sidon, as He did before upon Pharaoh (compare Ex. xiv. 4, 16, 17, to which the word WMJ in ver. 22, an unusual expression for Ezekiel, evidently points). The glorification is effected by judgments, through which He proves Himself to be holy upon the enemies of His people. He executes the judgments through pestilence and blood (yid. ch. v. 17, xxxviii. 22), i.e. through disease and bloodshed occasioned by war. so that men fall, slain by the sword (cf. ch. vi. 7). Instead of 7BJ we have the intensive form •/&?, which is regarded by Ewald and Hitzig as a copyist's error, because it is only met with here. Through these judgments the Lord will liberate His people Israel from all round about, who increase its suffering by their contempt. These thoughts sum up in ver. 24 the design of God's judgments upon all the neighbouring nations which are threatened in ch. xxv.-xxviii., and thus prepare the way for the concluding promise in vers. 25 and 26. The figure of the sting and thorn points back to Num. xxxiii. 55, where it is said that the Canaanites whom Israel failed to exterminate would become thorns in its eyes and stings in its sides. As Israel did not keep itself free from the Canaanitish nature of the heathen nations, God caused it to feel these stings of heathenism. Having been deeply hurt by them, it wTas now lying utterly prostrate with its wounds. The sins of Canaan, to which Israel had given itself up, had occasioned the destruction of Jerusalem (chap. xvi.). But Israel is not to succumb to its wounds. On the contrary, by destroying the heathen powers, the Lord will heal His people of the wounds which its heathen neighbours have inflicted upon it. Ji?p, synonymous with i^D in ch. ii. 6, a word only found in Ezekiel. l^P, on the contrary, is taken from Lev. xiii. 51 and xiv. 44, where it is applied to malignant leprosy (see the comm. on the former passage). — For Drritf D*jp^n, see ch. xvi. 57 and xxv. 6.
Yer. 25. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, When I shall gather the house of Israel out of the peoples among whom they have been scattered, I shall sanctify myself upon them before the eyes of the heathen nations, and they will dwell in their land which I have given to my servant Jacob. Ver. 26. They will dwell there securely, and build houses and plant vineyards, and will dwell securely when I execute judgments upon all who despise them of those round about them; and they shall learn that I Jehovah am their God. — Whilst the heathen nations succumb to the judgments of God, Israel passes on to a time of blessed peace. The Lord will gather His people from their dispersion among the heathen, bring them into the land which He gave to the patriarch Jacob, His servant, and give them in that land rest, security, and true prosperity. (For the fact itself, compare ch. xi. 17, xx. 41, xxxvi. 22 sqq.)
HE announcement of the judgment upon Egypt is proclaimed in seven u words of God." The first five are threats. The first (ch. xxix. 1-16) contains a threat of the judgment upon Pharaoh and his people and land, expressed in grand and general traits. The second (ch. xxix. 17-21) gives a special prediction of the conquest and plundering of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The third (ch. xxx. 1-19) depicts the day of judgment which will break upon Egypt and its allies. The fourth (ch. xxx. 20-26) foretells the annihilation of the might of Pharaoh by the king of Babylon; and the fifth (ch. xxxi.) holds up as a warning to the king and people of Egypt the glory and the overthrow of Assyria. The last two words of God in ch. xxxii. contain lamentations over the destruction of Pharaoh and his might, viz. ch. *xxii. 1-16, a lamentation over the king of Egypt; and ch. xxxii. 17-32, a second lamentation over the destruction of his imperial power. — Ezekiel's prophecy concerning Egypt assumes this elaborate form, because he regards the power of Pharaoh and Egypt as the embodiment of that phase of the imperial power which imagines in its ungodly self-deification that it is able to uphold the kingdom of God, and thus seduces the people of God to rely with false confidence upon the imperial power of this world.
Because Pharaoh looks upon himself as the creator of his kingdom and of his might, he is to be destroyed with his men of war (vers. 2-5a). In order that Israel may no longer put its trust in the fragile power of Egypt, the sword shall cut off from Egypt both man and beast, the land shall be turned into a barren wilderness, and the people shall be scattered over the lands (vers. bb-12). But after the expiration of the time appointed for its punishment, both people and land shall be restored, though only to remain an insignificant kingdom (vers. 13-16). — According to ver. 1, this prophecy belongs to the tenth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin; and as we may see by comparing it with the other oracles against Egypt of which the dates are given, it was the first word of God uttered by Ezekiel concerning this imperial kingdom. The contents also harmonize with this, inasmuch as the threat which it contains merely announces in general terms the overthrow of the might of Egypt and its king, without naming the instrument employed to execute the judgment, and at the same time the future condition of Egypt is also disclosed.
Vers. 1-12. Destruction of the might of Pharaoh, and devastation of Egypt. — Ver. 1. In the tenth year, in the tenth (month), on the twelfth of the month, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, direct thy face against Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Ver. 3. Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal with thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, thou great dragon which lieth in its rivers, which saith, u Mine is the river, and I have made it for myself." Ver. 4. / will put a ring into thy jaws, and cause the fishes of thy rivers to hang upon thy scales, and draw thee out of thy rivers, and all the fishes of thy rivers which hang upon thy scales; Ver. 5. And will cast thee into the desert, thee and all the fishes of thy rivers; upon the surface of the field wilt thou fall, thou wilt not be lifted up nor gathered together; I give thee for food to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the heaven. Ver. 6. And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall learn that I am Jehovah. Because it is a reed-staff to the house of Israel, — Ver. 7. When they grasp thee by thy branches, thou crackest and tearest open all their shoulder; and when they lean upon thee, thou breakest and causest all their loins to shake, — Ver. 8. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I bring upon thee the sword, and will cut off from thee man and beast; Ver. 9. And the land of Egypt will become a waste and desolation, and they shall learn that I am Jehovah. Because he saith: a The river is mine, and I have made it," Ver. 10. Therefore, behold, I will deal with thee and thy rivers, and will make the land of Egypt into barren waste desolations from Migdol to Syene, even to the border of Cush. Ver. 11. The foot of man will not pass through it, and the foot of beast will not pass through it, and it will not be inhabited for forty years. Ver. 12. / make the land of Egypt a waste in the midst of devastated lands, and its cities shall be waste among desolate cities forty years; and I scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them in the lands. — The date given, viz. " in the tenth year," is defended even by Hitzig as more correct than the reading of the LXX., iv tw ereu tw BcoBeKaroy; and he supposes the Alexandrian reading to have originated in the fact that the last date mentioned in ch. xxvi. 1 had already brought down the account to the eleventh year. — Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, against whom the threat is first directed, is called " the great dragon " in ver. 3. O^n (here and ch. xxxii. 2) is equivalent to pri, literally, the lengthened animal, the snake; here, the water-snake, the crocodile, the standing symbol of Egypt in the prophets (cf. Isa. li. 9, xxvii. 1; Ps. lxxiv. 13), which is here transferred to Pharaoh, as the ruler of Egypt and representative of its power. By B^K* we are to understand the arms and canals of the Nile (vid. Isa. vii. 18). The predicate, " lying in the midst of his rivers," points at once to the proud security in his own power to which Pharaoh gave himself up. As the crocodile lies quietly in the waters of the Nile, as though he were lord of the river; so did Pharaoh regard himself as the omnipotent lord of Egypt. His words affirm this: " the river is mine, I have made it for myself." The suffix attached to W*fe>g stands in the place of y, as ver. 9, where the suffix is wanting, clearly shows. There is an incorrectness in this use of the suffix, which evidently passed into the language of literature from the popular phraseology (cf. Ewald, § 315b). The rendering of the Vulgate, ego feci memetipsum, is false. *")fc* is the expression used by him as a king who regards the land and its rivers as his own property; in connection with which we must bear in mind that Egypt is indebted to the Nile not only for its greatness, but for its actual existence. In this respect Pharaoh says emphatically v, it is mine, it belongs to me, because he regards himself as the creator. The words, " I have made it for myself," simply explain the reason for the expression y, and affirm more than " I have put myself in possession of this through my own power, or have acquired its blessings for myself " (Havernick); or, " I have put it into its present condition by constructing canals, dams, sluices, and buildings by the river-side " (Hitzig). Pharaoh calls himself the creator of the Nile, because he regards himself as the creator of the greatness of Egypt. This pride, in which he forgets God and attributes divine power to himself, is the cause of his sin, for which he will be overthrown by God. God will draw the crocodile Pharaoh out of his Nile with 'hooks, and cast him upon the dry land, where he and the fishes that have been drawn out along with him upon his scales will not be gathered up, but devoured by the wild beasts and birds of prey. The figure is derived from the manner in which even in ancient times the crocodile was caught with large hooks of a peculiar construction (compare Ilerod. ii. 70, and the testimonies of travellers in Oedmann's Vermischten Sammlungen, III. pp. 6 sqq., and Jomard in the Description de VEgypte, I. p. 27). The form D"nn with a double Yod is a copyist's error, probably occasioned by the double Yod occurring after n in V3Jr?j which follows. A dual form for cnn is unsuitable,, and is not used anywhere else even by Ezekiel (cf. ch. xix. 4, 9, and more especially ch. xxxviii. 4). — The fishes which hang upon the scales of the monster, and are drawn along with it out of the Nile, are the inhabitants of Egypt, for the Nile represents the land. The casting of the beast into the wilderness, where it putrefies and is devoured by the beasts and birds of prey, must not be interpreted in the insipid manner proposed by Hitzig, namely, that Pharaoh would advance with his army into the desert of Arabia and be defeated there. The wilderness is the dry and barren land, in which animals that inhabit the water must perish; and the thought is simply that the monster will be cast upon the desert land, where it will finally become the food of the beasts of prey. — In ver. 6 the construction is a subject of dispute, inasmuch as many of the commentators follow the Hebrew division of the verse, taking the second hemistich 'til DHi^n \V\ as dependent upon the first half of the verse, for which it assigns the reason, and then interpreting ver. 7 as a further development of ver. 6b, and commencing a new period with ver. 8 (Hitzig, Kliefoth, and others). But it is decidedlywrong to connect together the two halves of the sixth verse, if only for the simple reason that the formula njpp "OK *3 WH, which occurs so frequently elsewhere in Ezekiel, invariably closes a train of thought, and is never followed by the addition of a further reason. Moreover, a sentence commencing with ]VS_ is just as invariably followed by an apodosis introduced by ]y?9 of which we have an example just below in vers. 96 and 10a. For both these reasons it is absolutely necessary that we should regard 'til DrrtVl |SP as the beginning of a protasis, the apodosis to which commences with |IJ in ver. 8. The correctness of this construction is established beyond all doubt by the fact that from ver. 66 onwards it is no longer Pharaoh who is spoken of, as in vers. 3-5, but Egypt; so that \p_ introduces