In the last few weeks, I’ve had to delve back into a subject that I haven’t spent much time researching since my initial deconversion. Ezekiel’s prophecy of Tyre, which can be found in Ezekiel 26-28, was a major piece of evidence for me in showing that the Bible was not as accurate as I had always thought. I’ve written about it twice before: first in a rather matter-of-fact manner, and later with a touch of sarcasm. The blog Thomistic Bent has recently done a 3-part series on Ezekiel’s prophecy of Tyre (1, 2, and 3), and my own posts on the subject have seen a lot of recent activity as well, so I think it’s time that I do a new series on the prophecy in as thorough a fashion as I know how. This will be a lengthy study, so I’ve decided to break it up into several parts.
At Face Value
I think it’s important to state up front that this prophecy simply fails at face value. To me, that’s significant, since God would be powerful enough to ensure that no matter what the prophecy stated, events would unfold exactly as predicted. In the prophecy, Ezekiel states that Tyre would be destroyed:
3 therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. 4 They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. 5 She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets, for I have spoken, declares the Lord God. And she shall become plunder for the nations, 6 and her daughters on the mainland shall be killed by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
— Ezek 26:3-613 And I will stop the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more. 14 I will make you a bare rock. You shall be a place for the spreading of nets. You shall never be rebuilt, for I am the Lord; I have spoken, declares the Lord God.
— Ezek 26:13-1421 I will bring you to a dreadful end, and you shall be no more. Though you be sought for, you will never be found again, declares the Lord God.”
— Ezek 26:21
And as you can see, in addition to being destroyed, it’s prophesied that Tyre will never be rebuilt or found again. But this is simply not true. We’ll get into the details later, but the simple fact is that once Tyre was finally destroyed, it was immediately rebuilt. Instead of being a bare rock, or even a ruin, it remained an extremely important trade hub in the region for centuries. And it’s the 4th largest city in Lebanon today.
So the events haven’t worked out exactly as the prophecy claimed they would. And for many people, myself included, that’s enough. I view this prophecy as a failure. Nevertheless, there’s much more that can be said by digging into the details of this prophecy, as well as the geography and history of Tyre and its surroundings. A number of people have found ways to claim that this prophecy has been fulfilled by focusing on the minutiae. I don’t find their arguments persuasive, however, and the next several posts will go into my reasons why.
Finding Truth 
Eclipse now,
It just seems to me that any position, religion, philosophy and position can be defended in the way that you’re defending Ezekiel and the bible.
Any contradiction or problem can be excused in such a way.
Maybe my modern agenda isn’t the problem, maybe the bible believer’s agenda is the problem.
It’s just a thought.
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Hi Eclipse Now,
I appreciate what you’re saying. And for what it’s worth, I agree with you that various writers in the Bible sometimes use hyperbole to illustrate a point, and they never intended those things to be taken literally. And I do think that you’re correct in saying that some of what Ezekiel says in chapters 26-28 is supposed to be taken in that way.
However, I think there’s still a clear, literal message that Ezekiel is trying to get across — that Tyre is simply going to cease being a factor. Its days of importance would be long gone. Now, I also think that Ezekiel is literally saying that Tyre would be utterly destroyed and never rebuilt. He says that very thing at least 3 times that I can think of.
To me, there’s no reason to think that statement is hyperbole. It’s possible that a place could be destroyed and never rebuilt — it’s far different than the language about the moon turning to blood and stars falling from the sky. It’s also a far more natural occurrence than any of the 10 plagues of Egypt or the story about the sun standing still.
So we have a situation where the text gives us no reason to think Ezekiel meant anything other than utter destruction with no chance for rebuilding. The only reason people would argue for a different interpretation is because events haven’t played out that way. And I suppose it’s possible to make the case for a different interpretation, but I would argue that those who do shouldn’t also try to use this as an example of prophecy fulfillment.
Of course, I do think it’s important to stress that even those other interpretations have problems. Nebuchadnezzar never took Tyre itself, just its mainland settlements. Alexander did destroy Tyre, but it was immediately rebuilt, and it rocketed back into prominence. The only time in its long history that sounds anywhere close to what Ezekiel describes came after its destruction in 1291. But that army (which was Muslim) didn’t have to besiege the city — Tyre opened its gates hoping for mercy. After it was destroyed, it largely remained in ruins and kept a very low population, until the 20th century. So even its lowest point didn’t match Ezekiel’s prophecy.
If we say that the prophecy was about Tyre’s culture, it still isn’t really true. Nebuchadnezzar did nothing to hurt it, and even though Alexander sacked it, many of its former inhabitants returned to help rebuild it. Now is the culture there different today? Sure. But that’s also what happens naturally in almost all places. Ezekiel wouldn’t have been saying much, if that had been his intent.
I also think the point about its ruins is somewhat irrelevant. All ancient cities have experienced the same kinds of changes — newer layers on top of older ones. Plus, Ezekiel, even if he was using hyperbole, said “you will be a bare rock.” He couldn’t say such a thing if he had been focused on the buildings. He’s talking about the site, not what’s on it.
You know, people have to make up their own minds about this, but I think skeptics have an incredibly strong argument with this prophecy. I understand that it doesn’t sway all Christians, but I truly feel like that happens despite the evidence, not because of it.
Sorry this comment was so long…
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I believe that there is one quick way to prove to Christians that all the prophecy and supernatural claims in the Bible are pure fiction:
Where is the Empty Tomb?
We have no record that the Christians of the first FOUR centuries venerated or even knew about the location of Jesus’ alleged tomb. If it existed, it would be the most important geographical location in the history of the Christian religion. It isn’t as if Jerusalem became a ghost town after 70 AD. People continued to live there. Are we to believe that Jesus’ Resurrection in circa 30 AD was accompanied by two massive earthquakes, the tearing down the middle of the curtain in the Holy of Holies, dead saints roaming the streets, appearances of the dead Jesus in Judea and Galilee to over FIVE HUNDRED eyewitnesses…and yet within a couple of decades, everyone, including Christians, forgot where this man was buried???
NOT believable.
We have no record that the Christians of the first four centuries venerated an empty tomb nor do they mention its location in any of their many writings. We can only guess why but I would bet that most probably it is because they knew that the Empty Tomb was a theological embellishment of the Gospel authors. Only after centuries had passed and the new religion had become thoroughly Gentile (pagan), did the Roman Empress enter Jerusalem in the fourth century and “discover” the Empty Tomb.
The Empty Tomb is a legend. It is not historical. Christians can hypothesize about how probable it is that Pilate would have allowed Jesus to be given a proper burial by the Sanhedrin; how improbable it is that first century Jews would have stolen/moved a recently dead body from its tomb, etc., etc., but the fact is that there is no record of any Christian, Jew, or Roman, in the first FOUR centuries of Christianity, having any clue as to the location of the greatest event to have ever occurred on planet earth.
It
is
a
tall
tale.
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I am Charles. I had a stroke a little more than tree years ago. My right side, from the top of my skull to the bottom of the soul of my foot is about 80% worthless. I am typing this with my left hand, but I am right handed. So, I can’t type like I used to. But I believe that God made me a prophet and has shown me the interpretation of what many of the previous prophets had to say. About six or seven years ago God told me that I would live to be seventy years old. Since I turned 69 last November I am actually in my 70th year right now. I told God that even my mother lived to be 77, and my father’s mother lived to be 77, so could I live a couple of years longer if need be? He did not give me a positive yes or no answer. BTW my other parent and grandparents lived into their middle 80s and even 90s. So, I might not even live until May of 2018. I fell like I will die by May of next year. That’s my opinion. So let me say that I started believing in God back in 1974, when I was 27 years old. I had a younger sister that started believing in God about six months earlier in Alaska. We were both atheist since about 1958 because our older brother. We lived in Phoenix AZ at the time. We were born in Ohio, I, in Doctors Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and Marilyn in Delaware OH, where we lived in the early 1950s. We moved to Prescott AZ, in Dec. 1957, and Phoenix AZ, in May of 1958. Lloyd became an atheist at that time, he was about three and half years older than I was. He said God did not make man but man created God. I went crying to my mom at that time and she didn’t give a good answer so I believed my brother. He was a gifted child. I mean really intelligent. He received his Doctors in behavioral psychology from Brown University in 1968, and was hired by Harvard in 1968. He was 24 at the time, and he replaced a man who was 39. He invented his own programming language called “the command line” language at age 22. My older brother invented genetic engineering with a friend at MIT in the summer of 1968. I went back to Providence in the summer of 1966 and worked for the psychology department of Brown University. I built equipment designed for students to run experiments on animals. Anyway I came back to Tempe AZ, and finished my degrees, BA in music, in 74 and BM in 76. BTW my brother Lloyd committed suicide Dec. 7th, pear harbor day, in 1968. After figuring out that with the use of laser beam technology he could alter the molecules of the DNA strand he could alter the way we could be born. Have purple eyes for example. He lost his draft status because he received his Doctors degree. He got divorced in the spring of 68. He had a mental and physical breakdown in Oct. of 68. His dean at Harvard would not support his research financially because of ethical reasons. He was not able to present his ideas at scheduled events in Houston and San Fransisco that fall because of his breakdown. He had his breakdown because he did not sleep for an entire week while speaking all of his ideas into a microphone and taping them. BTW, my Dad and younger brother Walter, who flew back to Harvard to identify the body and bring it back to Tempe, were denied access to his materials because Harvard said they belonged to them. Lloyd was given a closed casket burial because he was hit by a subway train while it came up to street level in Cambridge Square near Harvard.
I was a Behavioral Psychology major when I first enrolled at ASU in 1965, but my love Classical music made me switch to music theory & composition in 1967. I got married in July of 68 and dropped out of college to work at a large cafeteria, which was bought by another large cafeteria chain called Furr’s Cafeteria in 1969. I went to work at age 22 making 90 cents an hour, in May of 1968. Was drafted a few months later because I had dropped out of college. I appealed being drafted and six months later I received a letter saying my “friends and neighbors” had decided that I should represent them in the US Army. I went in the army on Feb 20, 1969. I went to Vietnam July 20, 1969, landed in Long Ben, Vietnam the same day that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and said “One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind.” I cooked for a helicopter company called the 282nd Black Cats. I still did not believe in God. In the summer 1971, I got out of the army and reenrolled at ASU, in Tempe AZ. In the fall of 73 I fell in love with a girl that was jail bait(17 years old) and in the spring 1974, she dumped me for a friend of mine who was working on his masters degree in music composition. That is when I broke down and cried out to God and told him that I didn’t even believe in him but my heart was broken into a million pieces. I had fallen in love with a girl (we were sleeping together) and I loved her with all my heart, mind and soul. Well, I’m going to cut this short at this time.
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Hi William,
it seems like now you’re saying “Let’s forget all this technical stuff about respecting genres, and actually coming to terms with what is in the text, and let’s just talk about something else now…”
If you want to say something on topic, I’m all ears. Like, do you want to demonstrate that the island dirt of Tyre rose up and sneered at God so that He was forced to curse the island itself and send it to the place of the dead? Where else does the bible ever speak of sending *geography* to the place of the dead?
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This is short? Not sure why you shared so much personal history. Were you leading up to something about Ezekiel, Tyre, or his prophecy?
P.S. Sorry about your stroke.
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Ex 34:14 “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:” God destroyed the Tyre that Ezekiel spoke of with king Nebuchadnezzar,and then sunk it under the ocean. Who cares about other Tyres that existed afterward. God was not mad at Tyre, he was mad at the people of Tyre that made fun of Jerusalem. He destroyed them forever.
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“Tyre is simply going to cease being a factor. Its days of importance would be long gone.”
Yes, that happened to the regime of Tyre that offended God. The waves of nations eventually killed their leaders, enslaved their people and threw their advanced culture into the sea.
As Benjamin of Tudela said in the 12th century:
“In the vicinity is found sugar of a high class, for men plant it here, and people come from all lands to buy it. A man can ascend the walls of New Tyre and see ancient Tyre, which the sea has now covered, lying at a stone’s throw from the new city. [ p. 31] And should one care to go forth by boat, one can see the castles, market-places, streets, and palaces in the bed of the sea. New Tyre is a busy place of commerce, to which merchants flock from all quarters.”
https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tudela.html
With that quote from Benjamin of Tudela, many would be tempted to try and argue that Ezekiel was *literally* fulfilled here. But I’m saying I don’t think that does justice to the text. It’s lazy reading, importing our modern assumptions about what a city is. It’s like the argument that city sites endure, no matter the travesty: London burned to the ground in the great fire of London, and was rebuilt, and we still call that London; San Francisco was destroyed in an earthquake and rebuilt and we still call that San Francisco, so therefore Tyre was rebuilt and we still call that Tyre and the prophecy is wrong! Someone could argue that way, but it’s bad reading. Shakespeare is wrong: Juliet is NOT a sun, she doesn’t glow or emit any heat!
For example, Nate wrote: “Now, I also think that Ezekiel is literally saying that Tyre would be utterly destroyed and never rebuilt.”
Ezekiel did write that about the Tyre *he knew*, but was he thinking about some future Tyre ambivalent to the fortunes of Israel? Does he even care about that? You’ve ignored everything *personal* in the passage, and want to believe that the “You” is referring to the island only. The city of Tyre will never be rebuilt on that island. In that case, are you going to be consistent in your reading of the passage? Are you going to explain to us how an island goes down to Sheol?
“…then I will bring YOU down with those who go down to the pit, to the people of long ago. I will make YOU dwell in the earth below, as in ancient ruins, with those who go down to the pit, and YOU will not return or take your place in the land of the living.”
I didn’t realise islands can die? Come on mate, if you’re going to be hyper-literalistic and ignore generations of Hebrew’s *personifying* regimes and cultures in their writing, you’re going to have to explain how an island dies.
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@Charles
I’m sorry about your condition, but this is really reaching:
“But I believe that God made me a prophet and has shown me the interpretation of what many of the previous prophets had to say.”
This is exactly the type of line that make me think “nutcase” and skip the rest.
I do sincerely hope you are better now though.
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Hi Charles,
I’m sorry about your stroke! And I hope that you get to live beyond 70, too.
Actually, that’s not what happened. It’s true that some Christian apologists claim something along those lines, but there’s absolutely no evidence for it. It even goes against the indications given within Ezekiel. I suggest you read the other articles in this series, because they’ll point out the flaws in those apologists’ arguments.
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“Actually, that’s not what happened. It’s true that some Christian apologists claim something along those lines, but there’s absolutely no evidence for it. It even goes against the indications given within Ezekiel. I suggest you read the other articles in this series, because they’ll point out the flaws in those apologists’ arguments.”
And yet you still haven’t dealt with the personal nature of the YOU in the text you claim to examine so thoroughly. Once again,
“Tyre is simply going to cease being a factor. Its days of importance would be long gone.”
Yes, that happened to the regime of Tyre that offended God. The waves of nations eventually killed their leaders, enslaved their people and threw their advanced culture into the sea.
As Benjamin of Tudela said in the 12th century:
“In the vicinity is found sugar of a high class, for men plant it here, and people come from all lands to buy it. A man can ascend the walls of New Tyre and see ancient Tyre, which the sea has now covered, lying at a stone’s throw from the new city. [ p. 31] And should one care to go forth by boat, one can see the castles, market-places, streets, and palaces in the bed of the sea. New Tyre is a busy place of commerce, to which merchants flock from all quarters.”
https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tudela.html
With that quote from Benjamin of Tudela, many would be tempted to try and argue that Ezekiel was *literally* fulfilled here. But I’m saying I don’t think that does justice to the text. It’s lazy reading, importing our modern assumptions about what a city is. It’s like the argument that city sites endure, no matter the travesty: London burned to the ground in the great fire of London, and was rebuilt, and we still call that London; San Francisco was destroyed in an earthquake and rebuilt and we still call that San Francisco, so therefore Tyre was rebuilt and we still call that Tyre and the prophecy is wrong! Someone could argue that way, but it’s bad reading. Shakespeare is wrong: Juliet is NOT a sun, she doesn’t glow or emit any heat!
For example, Nate wrote: “Now, I also think that Ezekiel is literally saying that Tyre would be utterly destroyed and never rebuilt.”
Ezekiel did write that about the Tyre *he knew*, but was he thinking about some future Tyre ambivalent to the fortunes of Israel? Does he even care about that? You’ve ignored everything *personal* in the passage, and want to believe that the “You” is referring to the island only. The city of Tyre will never be rebuilt on that island. In that case, are you going to be consistent in your reading of the passage? Are you going to explain to us how an island goes down to Sheol?
“…then I will bring YOU down with those who go down to the pit, to the people of long ago. I will make YOU dwell in the earth below, as in ancient ruins, with those who go down to the pit, and YOU will not return or take your place in the land of the living.”
I didn’t realise islands can die? Come on mate, if you’re going to be hyper-literalistic and ignore generations of Hebrew’s *personifying* regimes and cultures in their writing, you’re going to have to explain how an island dies.
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Hi Eclipse Now,
First of all:
That’s not actually what happened. The people that Ezekiel was talking to — the ones who “laughed” at Jerusalem’s destruction were never defeated. They withstood Nebuchadnezzar’s assault and weren’t defeated until several generations later. The actual people God was supposedly angry with never paid for their “transgressions.”
The Benjamin of Tudela quote is interesting, but I appreciate that you aren’t trying to use it to argue for a literal fulfillment of this prophecy.
I agreed with you in my last comment that some of what Ezekiel says is obviously being used as imagery. The Sheol statement is probably the best example of that. And in chapter 27 (I think) when Tyre is compared to a boat, that’s another obvious example. But the bulk of chapter 26 doesn’t use that kind of language — at least, it doesn’t appear that way to me.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say that Ezekiel was only talking about the Tyre he knew. As I said at the beginning of this comment, even that part of it fails. The people Ezekiel was so angry about were not destroyed.
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I wasn’t ignoring you, man, I just needed a minute. 🙂
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Nate,
there are *multiple* references to the YOU of Tyre going down to the underworld. Are you really going to insist that these are all metaphors for the personification of Tyre’s culture as a dead person, but that one YOU of never being rebuilt is literally referring to the city of Tyre, not a personification of it’s culture? Why? What in the passage makes you read it that way?
…You down to the pit = personification of the culture as people dying
..to the people of long ago = personification of the culture as people dying
…I will make you dwell in the earth below = personification of the culture as people dying
…with those who go down to the pit = personification of the culture as people dying
…you will not return or take your place in the land of the living = personification of the culture as people dying
…I will bring you to a horrible end and you will be no more = personification of the culture as people dying
…You will be sought, but you will never again be found = personification of the culture as people dying
Now let’s look up the chapter a little.
…I will put an end to your noisy songs = personification of the culture being silenced
…and the music of your harps will be heard no more = personification of the culture being silenced
…I will make you a bare rock = personification of the culture and town being wiped out
…and you will become a place to spread fishnets = personification of the culture and town being downgraded to a fishing village. People remain. Some survive, and this is assumed by the passage. The sign God’s judgement has been carried out is that – for a while – Tyre is reduced to a fishing village. But they’re not the great wealthy Phonetician culture Ezekiel is concerned with.
You will never be rebuilt = SUDDENLY, the way we’ve been forced to read this passage by the TEXT ITSELF has changed. Suddenly we need to come down on this like a ton of bricks and demand LITERAL! You LITERALLY said that scrap of land would never be rebuilt, and this is all about geography only, not the personification of a culture!
For Pete’s sake, why? What on earth makes you swap your reading goggles around like that? Is this not Ezekiel? Is this not prophetic judgement against a culture / regime, personified as “YOU” in so many other parts of the very same passage? Yet suddenly, because it suits your purposes it seems to me, you suddenly want to change the metaphor Ezekiel is using all the way through the chapter and demand LITERAL!
To which I reply, rubbish. Juliet is NOT the sun, she’s not even glowing!
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At this point, it may be best if we just re-read Ezekiel 26 in its entirety. Eclipse Now, I feel like you’re over-selling the metaphor in the chapter. Here’s the chapter, in order, and I think it illustrates why so many people assume this is talking about a literal destruction of the city:
That all sounds fairly literal to me. The bulk of the imagery seems to come in vs 15-21:
Personally, I don’t see how those last 7 verses change all the ones before, but I’m okay conceding it for the sake of argument. The simple fact is that the people living in Tyre when Ezekiel made this pronouncement were not killed, nor was their city destroyed. Forget about the “never rebuilt” part of it — I’m not even addressing that. Aside from destroying the mainland settlements, Nebuchadnezzar did nothing else — Tyre itself was only moderately inconvenienced, and its people were not killed. So how was the prophecy fulfilled?
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“Aside from destroying the mainland settlements,”
Isn’t that what Ezekiel said he would do, where the “waves” would start their job?
As for the ‘literal’ verses ‘metaphor’, is it helpful to distinguish between the rather literal description of the effects of the prophecy about the city versus the rather metaphorical effects of the prophecy against Tyre as a people. But here’s the thing. “You” can be consistently read all the way through as a personification of Tyre.
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OK, so is the “you” the people God was angry at? Was it the Power of Tyre? Was it the Culture?
But first things first: God gets angry at Israel for its sins and sends Nebby to punish them. Then God gets angry at Tyre for being like Nelson and saying “haw haw”? OK…
As Nate has pointed out, Nebby failed. The people saying “haw haw” were not killed. He (Nebby) did not break down their gates, his axes didn’t destroy their towers, and his horsemen did not trample all their streets. There is a lot of talk about “you’re ignoring the personal aspect of this prophecy”; well, let’s talk about the personal aspect. It says “he” will do this, “his” axes will do that, “his” horsemen will do something else. **None of those things happened.**
If we are saying the “you” is the power/culture of Tyre, even then, Nebby failed and it was many generations later that Alexander rolled through. So, what, God was saying “I’ll make you pay…eventually!” And if the “you” being “bare” and no more songs and such is the destruction of Tyre’s power and culture, then that has happened to literally every city. Rome is not the city it used to be before it was sacked and invaded by various Barbarian tribes; Baghdad was never the same after being invaded by the Huns/Mongols. London, Carthage, etc, etc. And in a couple thousand years the Power and Culture of the United States will be but a memory. That isn’t prophecy, that is history; it will happen because that’s what always happens.
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Hi eSell,
Neb went straight for the mainland Tyre as predicted.
“The people saying “haw haw” were not killed.”
1: It’s not that people sneered, but that the whole culture/regime/city-state was against God’s people, and that this came out in Tyre’s rejoicing in her downfall. This stuff can go on for generations. EG: Israel’s enmity with Babylon goes on for *thousands* of years. The very opening symbols of Genesis are a polemic narrative against Babylon’s own creation myth! To sneer that the people who said “Haw haw” in one particular generation misses the centuries long cold-wars and competition between some of these ancient nation-states. They have political and ideological and religious differences with blood feuds spanning the generations, centuries and even millennia; like the Palestinians versus Israel, like Babylon verses Israel, like Sunni versus Shia, like Tyre versus Israel.
2: Let’s also remember who the “YOU” Ezekiel refers to is: a personification of Tyre’s culture and city and people as a person: “YOU” will go down to the grave, the place of the dead, “YOU” will have your music silenced etc, and “YOU” will never be rebuilt! The personification is the metaphor, the consequences quite literal. Tyre’s culture and rulers and people and music and way of life were destroyed: never to return to the land of the living. Even archeologists are still having trouble digging them up! (Google Scholar the archeology of Phoenician Tyre if you don’t believe me).
3: How were the nations going to come against Tyre? In waves. It’s all there, at the beginning of the passage. The nations came against Tyre as waves from the ocean, one after another, as predicted.
Siege of Tyre (724–720 BC) by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser V and Sargon II
Siege of Tyre (701 BC) by the Assyrians under Sennacherib
Siege of Tyre (671 BC) by the Assyrians under Esarhaddon
Siege of Tyre (663 BC) by the Assyrians under Ashurbanipal
Siege of Tyre (586–573 BC) by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II
Siege of Tyre (332 BC) by the Macedonians under Alexander the Great
Siege of Tyre (315–314 BC) by Antigonus I Monophthalmus
Siege of Tyre (996–998) by the Fatimids
Siege of Tyre (1111–1112) by the Crusaders under Baldwin I of Jerusalem
Siege of Tyre (1124) by the Venetians
Siege of Tyre (1187) by the Ayyubids under Saladin
4: The judgement was going to *start* with Nebuchadnezzar. The entire mainland settlements were wiped out and enslaved and subjugated. You’re not saying that had no historical or economic impact on Tyre proper, are you? Neb kicked off the judgement on the mainland, exactly as predicted in a very prophetic, poetic piece.
5: Neb didn’t finish the job and Ezekiel acknowledges that. Indeed, if we’ve been paying attention, Ezekiel *predicted* that! The nations would come against Tyre in waves, see above.
6: Jesus and the apostles were not troubled by Tyre’s existence.
7: Have you read Benjamin of Tudela’s tour of Tyre from the 12th century? (In the thread above).
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Hi Eclipse Now,
I’m saying that most, if not all, of your points on tyre have been addressed in the several articles nate has posted on tyre on this blog.
I’m also saying that your excuses are just that, excuses.
I’m saying that any problem, with anything, can be excused in the same way.
What I’m saying now is that the bible is simply a collection of claims that other men have said about a god. Faith in that god is rooted, first and foremost, in faith in those men, that what they say about that god is somehow true, while all other people who make claims about that god or other gods are somehow wrong.
I’ve lost interest. Tyre is there. despite what Ezekiel said. You said tyre was underwater, while only part of the old island is and other parts, including an original port is still in use. Ironically, the causeway that Alexander built to siege the island city has only added to its land mass is now an occupied and built up part of the city today.
If forever doesn’t mean forever, and if desolate doesn’t mean desolate, and if utterly destroyed doesn’t mean utterly destroyed, if never found doesn’t mean never found, then yeah, you may be on to something.
And do you really think that a threat of, “God will destroy that place completely and it will remain desolate forever” that the majority of people back then understood that to mean, “God will sack the place, but it will be rebuilt and back in order fairly soon?”
If this were a prophecy in the Koran, you’d have no issue seeing how utterly weak it is.
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Anybody ever wondered why Ezekiel is referred to as “Son of man” for seventy or eighty times in the book of Ezekiel?
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Yes, Eclipse, waves and personification of a culture. I can agree with that. Also, that’s why I didn’t say anything about those aspects of the Prophecy, and why I didn’t say anything about the “they will plunder your riches” and “they will pull down your pleasant houses”. The “they” could likely refer to the other waves (not Nebby).
But what about the bits that refer *specifically* to Nebby? His horsemen didn’t trample all the streets; his axes did not break down the towers; he did not enter the city. He destroyed the suburbs on the mainland only. Sure, the effort had a negative impact on the city proper (island), but not enough to destroy their power or culture.
The argument that “he was prophesied to fail b/c there had to be other waves” is a bit awkward. “Nebby will kill your daughters on the mainland, his horsemen will trample all your streets, his axes will break down your towers, he will set a battering ram against your walls, he will enter the city”…but he clearly has to fail so there can be other waves. Seems that Alexander doing many of the things that Nebby *specifically* was supposed to do (but DIDN’T) didn’t stop subsequent waves, so the “Argument from Necessary Failure” appears to be invalid.
Yes, many nations have come against Tyre, so you could say that is fulfillment of part of the prophecy, but as I mentioned before, that is like “prophesying” that the US will one day cease to exist. Of course it will, given enough time. Of course many nations will come against Tyre, just like many nations have come up against every city throughout history (or every important city). And yes, their power and culture were eventually at an end…just like the power and culture of every nation/civilization through history.
The things that could not fail to happen (attacked by many nations, eventual Fall of the culture), predictably did not fail to happen, while Nebby failed to do the things specifically set out for him to do (save only his successful destruction of the mainland “daughters”).
Prophecy Fail.
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Verses 7-11 are, without question, talking about Nebuchadnezzar:
The only part of this that Nebuchadnezzar accomplished was the beginning of verse 8 (“He will kill with the sword your daughters on the mainland.”). I cover this in detail in parts 2, 3, and 4 of this series. The bulk of these predictions are against Tyre itself, not the mainland, and we know that Nebuchadnezzar didn’t manage to do any of this.
So you’re saying that God decided to deliver an extremely slow judgment against Tyre that unfolded over many generations. You don’t see moral difficulties in knowing that God would punish people for the “sins” of their ancestors? How do we look on people who behave that way today? People who attack children in order to get to the parents?
Furthermore, we should hesitate to take everything Ezekiel says at face value. He claims that Tyre was glad to see Jerusalem destroyed, and maybe they were. But it’s also possible that Ezekiel was jealous of Tyre’s ability to withstand Babylon. Misery loves company, after all.
Tyre was a major trade hub. They traded with everyone including Israel and Judah, as Ezekiel says himself in chapter 27. With their prosperity, I have no doubt that they were prideful, but I’m a little skeptical that they actually took pleasure in what happened to Jerusalem. And even if they did, the blame for that should have been upon those people, not their descendants.
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Apparently we were thinking along the same lines, Eric. 🙂
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Charles, it’s my understanding that “son of man” (at least when used in the OT) basically just means “man.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_man
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Anybody wonder why Jesus referred to himself as the “Son of man?”
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