Ezekielchapter 26
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Speaks with:Ezekiel 26×6Isaiah 23×5Ezekiel 27×4Isaiah 14×3Isaiah 5×2Ezekiel 32×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Against Tyre, who said of Jerusalem, 'Aha, she is broken that was the gate of the peoples', glad to inherit the trade of a ruined rival. Jehovah brings up many nations against her as the sea causes its waves to come up, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar king of kings from the north with horses and chariots. Her walls are broken, her towers taken down, her very dust scraped away: 'I will make thee a bare rock… a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.' The princes of the sea come down from their thrones and clothe themselves with trembling. 'Thou shalt be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again.'
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel — Ezekiel overview
- A. 1–6 Tyre rejoiced when the gate of the peoples broke
- B. 7–14 Nebuchadnezzar comes; a bare rock for drying nets
- C. 15–18 The princes of the sea step down from their thrones
- D. 19–21 Taken down to the pit and sought for no more
The outline
A.Tyre rejoiced when the gate of the peoples brokevv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.Nebuchadnezzar comes; a bare rock for drying netsvv. 7 to 14
Read vv. 7 to 14 →C.The princes of the sea step down from their thronesvv. 15 to 18
Read vv. 15 to 18 →D.Taken down to the pit and sought for no morevv. 19 to 21
Read vv. 19 to 21 →
The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 26The history
Tyre was two cities. On the mainland stood a settlement with farmland and water; half a mile offshore stood the real Tyre, a rock island ringed by walls said to reach a hundred and fifty feet, with two harbours — one facing north toward Sidon, one south toward Egypt. An island that could be resupplied by sea was close to unconquerable, and Tyre knew it.
The taunt Ezekiel quotes is commercial. Aha, the gate of the peoples is broken; now that she is ruined I shall be filled. Jerusalem sat astride the inland routes and took its cut. With Jerusalem gone, Tyre expected the whole trade to come to the coast.
The judgment is described as waves: many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. Then the specifics — the walls thrown down, the towers broken, the dust scraped away until she is a bare rock, a place for spreading fishing nets. The chapter names Nebuchadnezzar directly, and then shifts to they and many nations, which is why the fulfilment ran in stages.
Those stages are documented. Josephus, quoting the Tyrian historian Menander of Ephesus, records that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. The mainland city fell; the island held out and settled on terms, and Ezekiel himself says frankly in a later chapter that the army got no wages for all that labour. Two and a half centuries afterwards Alexander the Great took the island in 332 BC by scraping the ruins of the mainland city into the sea to build a causeway out to it — the dust literally scraped from the rock and thrown into the water.
What it meant to them
The exiles were watching a city that had profited from their destruction, and that looked immune. This oracle says the sea will not save it.
The picture that would have stayed with them is the last one: princes of the sea stepping down from their thrones, laying aside their embroidered robes, sitting on the ground and trembling. The men who traded in everything end up with nothing to sit on but the ground.
Sources cited
- Flavius Josephus, Against Apion , citing Menander of Ephesus on the thirteen-year siege of Tyre
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Herodotus, The Histories
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 26. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.