1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Inasmuch as your heart was haughty and you said, ‘I am a god, enthroned like a god. I have sat in the heart of the seas.’—but you are human and not a god, and you thought your heart like the heart of a god! 3Why, you are wiser than Daniel. In all obscure things none can match you! 4Through your wisdom and through your discernment you have gained wealth, and you have gathered gold and silver in your treasure houses. 5Through all your wisdom in your trading you have made your wealth great, and your heart became haughty through your wealth. 6Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: Inasmuch as you have thought your heart like the heart of a god, 7therefore am I about to bring against you strangers, the fearsome ones of the nations, and they shall unsheathe their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and profane your splendor. 8To the Pit they shall bring you down, and you shall die the deaths of the slain in the heart of the seas. 9Will you really say, ‘I am a god’ before your killer? But you are human and not a god in the hand of him who slays you. 10The death of the uncircumcised you shall die by the hand of strangers, for I have spoken,” said the Master, the LORD.
11And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 12“Man, sound a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Man, you are the sealer of the plan, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. 13In Eden the garden of God you were. Every precious stone was in your raiment—carnelian, chrysolite, and amethyst, beryl, lapis lazuli, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald and gold crafted to beautify you and your groves within you. On the day you were created they were made. 14You were a cherub anointed and sheltering. And I set you on a holy mountain. A god you were. Among stones of fire you walked about. 15Unblemished you were in your ways from the day you were created until wrongdoing was found in you. 16Through all your trading, you were filled with acts of outrage and offended, and I profaned you, not to be on the mountain of God, and made you wander, O sheltering cherub, far from the stones of fire. 17Your heart grew haughty through your beauty. You ruined your wisdom together with your splendor. I flung you to the ground; before kings I set you to be stared at. 18From all your crimes, through the wrongdoing of your trading, you profaned your sanctuaries, and I brought out fire from within you—it consumed you. And I turned you into ashes on the ground before the eyes of all who saw you. 19All who knew you among the peoples were shocked over you.
You are become a horror,
and you exist no more, forever.”
20And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 21“Man, set your face to Sidon and prophesy concerning her. 22And say, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Here I am against you, Sidon, and I will be honored in your midst, and they shall know that I am the LORD when I carry out punishments within her, and I will be hallowed in her. 23And I will send against her pestilence and blood in her streets, and the slain shall fall within her by the sword against her all around, and they shall know that I am the LORD. 24And the house of Israel shall no longer have stinging thistles and painful thorns from all around them who despise them, and they shall know that I am the LORD.”
25Thus said the Master, the LORD: “When I gather in the house of Israel from the peoples where they were scattered, I will be hallowed through them in the eyes of the nations, and they shall dwell on their soil that I gave to My servant Jacob. 26And they shall dwell on it secure and build houses and plant vineyards when I carry out punishments against all who despise them all around them, and they shall know that I am the LORD.”
CHAPTER 28 NOTES
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2. the prince of Tyre. Why Ezekiel should have directed all these prophecies of doom against Tyre is not entirely evident. The Phoenicians had been trading partners of the kingdom of Judah since the time of Solomon, and they were in no way allied with the Babylonians, as were the hated Edomites. The prophet’s objection to Tyre, as emerges in the second part of this verse and in what follows, appears to have been theological rather than political: this prosperous maritime kingdom, enjoying luxurious wealth from its trading activities, had in the prophet’s view committed the primal transgression of imagining that it was godlike.
your heart. Again, one must remember that the heart was thought of as the seat of intellection, which leads to the indictment of Tyre’s pride in its wisdom in the next verse.
3. wiser than Daniel. This is, of course, not the Daniel of the later biblical book but a wise and virtuous figure of Ugaritic—and, presumably, Canaanite—legend. It might be noted that though the Masoretic vocalization asks us to pronounce the name “Daniel,” the consonantal text shows danʾel (without the yod after the nun), which is how the name appears in the Ugaritic.
10. The death of the uncircumcised you shall die. This dire fate must be understood in light of the relatively widespread practice of circumcision among the peoples adjacent to ancient Israel. The act enjoined on Abraham and his descendants was not an innovation; what was new was the meaning imposed on the act. It is noteworthy that of all the surrounding groups, only the Philistines are given the repeated epithet “uncircumcised,” and the Philistines were not a Semitic people, having arrived on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from the Greek realm in the thirteenth century B.C.E.
13. In Eden the garden of God you were. The prophet here chooses a somewhat surprising rhetorical strategy. In order to represent—hyperbolically—the perfect splendor enjoyed by Sidon, which will now be violently shorn from it, he imagines the king of Sidon living an angelic life in the Garden of Eden.
Every precious stone was in your raiment. The list of precious stones is the same as those on the breastplate of a high priest. In both cases, the precise identification of most of the stones is not possible. There is nothing whatever about bejeweled garments in the Garden story in Genesis—the first two humans walk about naked—so this is either a free elaboration on the part of Ezekiel or the reflection of a different tradition about Eden.
crafted to beautify you and your groves. The meaning of the entire string of phrases is doubtful.
14. You were a cherub anointed and sheltering. The Hebrew phrase is obscure, especially the word here conjecturally translated as “anointed.” In the Garden story, the only cherub mentioned appears at the moment of expulsion, wielding a fiery sword to block the way to Eden.
a holy mountain. There is no reference to a mountain in the Eden of Genesis, but perhaps Ezekiel introduces one here because of the conception of a mountain as the dwelling place of the gods in Syro-Canaanite tradition.
A god you were. This is, of course, an audacious assertion. It probably should be seen as a translation into poetic-mythological hyperbole of Tyre’s notion that it is a god.
Among stones of fire you walked about. Although this is meant to express the godlike invulnerability of the Edenic Sidon, it is still another detail never hinted at in the canonical Garden story. It could be a poetic invention, but one suspects that Ezekiel was tapping a tradition about Eden that has not survived elsewhere.
16. I profaned you, not to be on the mountain of God. “To be” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
17. Your heart grew haughty through your beauty. Just as Ezekiel rages against the seductive allure of the female body, the very presence of beauty—the finely wrought aesthetic objects made possible through Sidon’s wealth—seems to him a snare that catches its possessor in pride and arrogant self-regard.
22. I will be honored in your midst. God is honored, hallowed, by manifesting His overwhelming power to destroy a kingdom intoxicated with its own grandeur.
24. And the house of Israel shall no longer have stinging thistles and painful thorns. Historically, it is not clear how the Phoenicians were such tormentors of Israel, though Ezekiel seems persuaded that this was the case.