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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - Ezekiel 28:1 - 28:5
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That proper scope and security might be found for the active energies of the Tyrians, it was necessary that a certain amount of freedom should be enjoyed by the citizens, and even a considerable share obtained in the administration of civil affairs. The king there must have been a limited, not a despotic sovereign, and could only rule as a prince among merchants, who were themselves princes.
It is not only certain that there was a hereditary king in Tyre, but the fragments of Phoenician history already referred to in the preceding chapters have also preserved the name of the king who at that precise time occupied the throne—Ithobal II. And in the king, as the natural head and representative of the whole state, the prophet sees the full embodiment, the extreme culmination, of the spirit by which the state in general was pervaded—the spirit of self-sufficiency, carnal security, and immoderate pride. These feelings, the natural product of unsanctified prosperity, penetrated the whole community of Tyre; but in the bosom of its monarch they might justly be supposed to find their chosen seat, and their ripest development. And assuming, as they necessarily did, an attitude of lofty indifference, or even of high disdain, in respect to the God of Israel, whose cause seemed then to be sinking amid deep waters while Tyre still held on her majestic course, the prophet’s bosom heaved with violent emotion, and in a vein of severe and cutting irony, he exhibits the fancied superhuman greatness, the godlike independence and ascendancy of the king of Tyre, that he might magnify the more the infinite power and supremacy of him whose overruling providence was to lay all prostrate in the dust. It is substantially the same form of representation with that which was adopted by Isaiah respecting the king of Babylon, in the 14th chapter of his writings, where the proud heart of that aspiring monarch is described as scaling the very heavens, and claiming to be as the Most High, but only that it might be cast down to the stones of the pit, and trodden upon as a carcase under feet of men. But here, as usual, our prophet is not satisfied with depicting in a few lively strokes the towering ambition of the earthly prince; he ransacks alike the past and the present for the most varied and striking imagery, under which to body forth its pretensions, that so he might present, in more vivid contrast, what it impiously aspired to be, with what it really was. While it was neither new nor peculiar to our prophet to speak in ironical language on such a subject, there is no single passage of Scripture, either in the Old or in the New Testament, where the irony is of so detailed a form, and is cast in altogether so peculiar a mould. Yet it is the Spirit of God that breathes in the words, revealing to our souls the impiety of all ambition, and the vanity of all greatness, which seeks its foundation and support elsewhere than in the power and goodness of the Eternal.
Eze_28:1. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
Eze_28:2. Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thy heart is lifted up, and thou sayest I am God (El), a God’s seat I occupy in the midst of the seas; and (though) thou art man and not God, thou settest thy heart as the heart of God.
Eze_28:3. Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; no secret is hid from thee.
Eze_28:4. By thy wisdom and by thy understanding thou hast gotten to thee power; and thou hast gotten gold and silver in thy treasures.
Eze_28:5. By thy great wisdom in thy traffic thou hast increased thy power, and thy heart is lifted up on account of thy power.
It is the feeling of superhuman might and strength which the prophet evidently means to ascribe to the king of Tyre in the first part of this representation. Hence it is God as the El, the Supreme in power, the Mighty One, whose name and prerogative he is described as impiously arrogating to himself. And the idea is further expanded by the thought that he sits as a God, or occupies a God’s seat in the midst of the seas; holding his place, as it were, in impregnable security amid the stormiest elements of nature, and knowing how to wield and control them so as to render them subservient to his own ends and interests. To ascribe this sentiment, with Hitzig, to the king of Tyre, “because his residence juts up out of the water, much as the palace of God does out of the heavenly ocean above” (Psa_104:3), is indescribably flat, and a palpable misapplication besides of the passage of Scripture referred to. The Psalmist is there speaking not of the throne or habitation of God standing out from the boundless ocean of immensity (of which there is nowhere a word in Scripture), but of his constructing a sort of visible habitation for himself out of the watery vapours of the sky—the clouds, which he makes his chariots. The idea also of Hävernick, though in better taste than that of Hitzig, that respect is had, in the language here ascribed to the king of Tyre, to the species of Divine honour paid to Oriental monarchs (notice of which is taken in Curtius, x. 11. 1; Josephus, ix. 6. 1), is fanciful. It was scarcely possible in a city like Tyre, where the subjects necessarily pressed so close upon the king, that he could be the subject of properly religious homage. There was no room there for those wonderful personal exploits, or that mysterious seclusion and grandeur, which always formed the ground and nutriment of such profound veneration. What is here spoken as from the heart of the king of Tyre, is the proud consciousness of strength and security, which was engendered by the naturally strong position and the immense maritime resources of the state over which he reigned. This gave him such a sense of elevation and independence, as is only put into words when he is represented as claiming for himself the name and posture of Deity. It might certainly tend to foster and strengthen this feeling, as Hävernick not improbably conceives, that the island, which was the seat and stronghold of the Tyrian state, possessed somewhat of a sacred character, and was regarded as peculiarly connected with the powers above. It is expressly called “the holy island” by Sanconiathon (p. 36, ed. Orelli); and, as already noticed, was so distinguished for the worship of Hercules, that the Tyrian colonies all reverenced it as the mother-city of their religion, not less than the original source of their political existence. And it was only in the spirit of ancient heathenism to conclude that a state, which was considered to stand in so close a connection with the Divine, might be warranted in claiming, through its head, exemption from the common casualties of fortune, and even something like supernatural strength and absolute perpetuity of being.
In the succeeding verses (Eze_28:3-5) the prophet merely follows out, and ironically applies the thought which he had already ascribed to the king of Tyre. Exalting himself as a God, he was of course, in his own imagination, superior in intelligence and sagacity to the wisest of mortals; wiser even than Daniel, who, by special assistance received from Heaven, was known far and wide to have put to shame the renowned wisdom of Chaldea; and so unerring in counsel, so far-reaching in discernment, as to have surrounded the smallest territory with the most extensive commerce and the amplest resources. Not perceiving that this is spoken ironically by the prophet, and for the purpose merely of giving a tongue to the foolish thoughts which swelled the heart of the king of Tyre, that their folly and wickedness might appear to all, the ancient interpreters have given some of the sentences an interrogative turn: Art thou wiser? etc.; and most of the earlier commentators have supposed that the words here, and afterwards in Eze_28:12-14, were not properly ]used of Tyre, but were rather to be understood mystically of Satan. (The views of the Fathers who held this opinion, comprehending those of Origen, Tertullian, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, are carefully brought together in Villalpandus, who himself agrees with those who took a middle course, ascribing what was said partly to the prince of Tyre and partly to Satan.) It is not necessary now, however, to defend the plain sense of Scripture from such arbitrary modes of interpretation, which need only to be applied to other portions, to extract from the Bible any doctrine or meaning that the capricious fancies of men might wish to find in it. Even Jerome silently admits as much; for however differently he has expressed himself elsewhere, when he comes to write his commentary on the passage, he understands the whole discourse of the prince of Tyre, though he still could very imperfectly find his way to a correct explanation of the import. Let only the real character of the description be borne in mind, and there will be no difficulty in perceiving its fitting application to the king of Tyre. It belongs to that species of composition common to all languages, and frequently resorted to, especially by those who have to deal with the errors and delusions of men, in which—instead of directly disputing the mistaken views they hold, or arguing with the false spirit that actuates them—such a graphic representation is given of these as carries its own exposure or refutation along with it. Thus, here, when the prophet has asserted of the king of Tyre that while he was but a man he bore himself as God, and then proceeds to give utterance to the sentiments that necessarily grew out of this absurd and impious pretension,—that he was wiser than Daniel, that he could reveal all secrets, that his own intelligence and sagacity had secured for him the possession of all his wealth,—this could not fail to convey to every reflecting mind an impression of the thoroughly profane and godless spirit that reigned in the bosom of the king of Tyre, and of his ripeness for the judgment of Heaven. The carcase manifestly was there; now, therefore, must the eagles be gathered together.