Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 27:26 - 27:26

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 27:26 - 27:26


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Destruction of Tyre

Eze 27:26. Thy rowers brought thee into great waters: the east wind broke thee up in the heart of the seas. Eze 27:27. Thy riches and thy sales, thy bartering wares, thy seamen and thy sailors, the repairers of thy leaks and the treaders 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. Eze 27:28. At the noise of the cry of thy sailors the places tremble. Eze 27:29. And out of their ships come all the oarsmen, seamen, all the sailors of the sea; they come upon the land, Eze 27:20. And make their voice heard over thee, and cry bitterly, and put dust upon their heads, and cover themselves with ashes; Eze 27:31. And shave themselves bald on thy account, and gird on sackcloth, and weep for thee in anguish of soul a bitter wailing. Eze 27:32. 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!. Eze 27:33. 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. Eze 27:34. 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. Eze 27:35. All the inhabitants of the islands are amazed at thee, and their kings shudder greatly; their faces quiver. Eze 27:36. 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 Eze 27:26 of the allegory of Eze 27:5-9; Tyre is a ship, which is wrecked by the east wind (cf. Psa 48:8). 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 27:1). Like a ship broken in pieces by the storm, Tyre with all its glory sinks into the depths of the sea. The repetition of בְּלֵב in Eze 27:26 and Eze 27:27 forms an effective contrast to Eze 27:25; 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 Eze 27:25. 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 qâhâl, or gathering of people, in the ship. The difficult expression בְּכָל־קְהָלֵךְ can only be taken as an explanatory apposition to אֲשֶׁר בָּךְ: all the men who are in thee, namely, in the multitude of people in thee. Eze 27:28. When the vessel is wrecked, the managers of the ship raise such a cry that the migreshōth tremble. מִגְרָשׁ is used in Num 35:2 for the precincts around the Levitical cities, which were set apart as pasture ground for the flocks; and in Eze 45:2; Eze 48:17, for the ground surrounding the holy city. Consequently מִגְרְשֹׁות 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.

Eze 27:29. The ruin 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 were no longer safe in them, and leaving them for the land, bewail the fall of Tyre with deepest lamentation. הִשְׁמִיעַ with בְּקֹול, as in Psa 26:7; 1Ch 15:19, 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. Jos 7:6; 1Sa 4:12; and Job 2:12) and ashes (הִתְפַּלֵּשׁ, to strew, or cover oneself, not to roll oneself: see the comm. on Mic 1:10); shaving a bald place (see Eze 7:18 and the comm. on Mic 1:16); putting on sackcloth; loud, bitter weeping (בְּמַר, as in Job 7:11 and Job 10:1); and singing an mournful dirge (Eze 27:32.). בְּנִיהֶם, in lamento eorum; נִי contracted from נְהִי (Jer 9:17-18; cf. הִי, Eze 2:10). The reading adopted by the lxx, Theodot., Syr., and eleven Codd. (בְּנֵיהֶם) is unsuitable, as there is no allusion to sons, but the seamen themselves raise the lamentation. The correction proposed by Hitzig, בְּפִיהֶם, is altogether inappropriate. The exclamation, Who is like Tyre! is more precisely defined by כְּדֻמָּה, like the destroyed one in the midst of the sea. דֻּמָּה, participle Pual, with the מ dropt, as in 2Ki 2:10, etc. (vid., Ges. §52. 2, Anm. 6). It is quite superfluous to assume that there was a noun דֻּמָּה signifying destruction. 'בּצֵאת עזב 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 הִשְׂבַּעַתְּ also suggested this simile); “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. הֹונַיִךְ in the plural is only met with here. - Eze 27:34. But now Tyre with its treasures and its inhabitants has sunk in the depths of the sea. The antithesis in which Eze 27:34 really stands to Eze 27:33 does not warrant our altering עֵת into עַתָּ נִשְׁבַּרְתְּ, as Ewald and Hitzig propose, or adopting a different division of the second hemistich. עֵת is an adverbial accusative, as in Eze 16:57 : “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.” עֵת נִשְׁבֶּרֶת, tempore quo fracta es. נִשְׁבֶּרֶת מִיַמִּים is intentionally selected as an antithesis to נֹושֶׁבֶת מִיַמִּים in Eze 26:17. - Eze 27:35. 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 (Eze 27:36) 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. שָׁמֵם, to be laid waste, or thrown into perturbation with terror and amazement. רָעַם פָנִים .tnemezama dna, to tremble or quiver in the face, i.e., to tremble so much that the terror shows itself in the countenance. - In Eze 27:36 Ezekiel brings the lamentation to a close in a similar manner to the threat contained in Ezekiel 26 (vid., Eze 26:21).