Ezekiel's Prophecy about Tyre
and with chariots, and with horsemen, and a company, and much people.
26:8 He shall kill with the sword your daughters in the field; and he shall
make forts against you, and cast up a mound against you, and raise up the
buckler against you. 26:9 He shall set his battering engines against your
walls, and with his axes he shall break down your towers. 26:10 By reason of
the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover you: your walls shall shake
at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wagons, and of the chariots, when he
shall enter into your gates, as men enter into a city in which is made a breach.
Reading: Ezek. 26.1-14
London used to be the centre of the world
- because the English Empire owned countries all over the world
- and the products of those countries came to London for sale there
- and from the London docks they were sold and exported to the world
- and a percentage of all these sales made this country very rich
- that is why the Royal Navy and the Merchant navy was so important
- Britain was like a gateway for the riches of the world
- there is no single city like that today, except perhaps New York
- but in Ezekiel's day there was a much richer city: Tyre
- all the riches from the Far East travelled over land to Tyre for sale
- the merchants in Tyre traded them, then exported them to the world
- and a percentage of all those sales made Tyre one of the richest cities
26.12b They shall break down your walls, and destroy your pleasant houses;
and they shall lay your stones and your timber and your dust in the midst of
the waters. 26:13 I will cause the noise of your songs to cease; and the sound
of your harps shall be no more heard. 26:14 I will make you a bare rock; you
shall be a place for the spreading of nets; you shall be built no more:
Lets see what details have been prophesied here:
First there is a summary of what will happen
v3 - many nations will be involved in destroying Tyre
v4 - they will destroy the walls and towers
v4-5 - they will remove all the stones and even scrape off the dust
v5 - it will end up as bare rock where fishermen spread their nets
Ezekiel must have been very surprised when God told him about Tyre
- he said that Tyre would be totally destroyed, which was bad enough
- but the strangest thing was the amount of details about the downfall
- Ezekiel records them all, though I wonder why he did it
- perhaps he thought that the prophecy might sound more realistic
- because it certainly sounded very improbable
- we can just about believe that the twin towers were destroyed
- but who could believe that the whole of New York could be destroyed
- of course, an atom bomb could do it today, but without dynamite?
- it seemed impossible that one of the strongest cities would fall
v7 - Nebuchdnezzar will be come, with cavalry and chariots
v8 - he will kill the women in the field and besiege the city
v9 - he will break down the walls and towers with battering rams
v10 - his army will enter the city
Note: it doesn't say Nebuchadnezzar will kill the men or army
For us, the details about the fall of Tyre are very important
- because they become, for us, a confirmation that Ezekiel saw the future
- anyone can guess that a disaster will fall on a city, eventually
- but no one could predict things with this much detail:
v12b - Someone (we'll find it isn't Nebuchadnezzar) will destroy houses
v12 - he will throw the stones, timbers and even dust in the sea
v14 - till it is a bare rock, smooth enough for fishermen to spread their nets
v14 - no-one will rebuild the city
Ezek.26:3 Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I am against you, Tyre, and
will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to
come up. 26:4 They shall destroy the walls of Tyre, and break down her
towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her a bare rock. 26:5
She shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; for I
have spoken it, says the Lord Yahweh;
The detail about being a rock for fishermen's net was repeated
- it was in v.5 and then again in v.14, as if it is very significant
- it was certainly very surprising, because it sees like overkill
- when you conquer a city, you destroy the walls and torch the houses
- but you don't bother with a demolition job, clearing the ground
- you leave all the rubbish so they can't rebuild till they clear it
- though you might clear out the larger masonry to be used elsewhere
- but no-one would think of clearing all the soil away
26:7 For thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I will bring on Tyre
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, from the north, with horses,
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If you look at the remains of any ancient city, they are always on a hill
- this isn't because ancient cities were always built on hills
- because if you dig down, you find that the hill IS the city of the past
- buildings were always put of top of the remains of the older city
- that's why archaeologists always dig down to discover the past
- the city of Tyre was already old, so the bedrock was a long way down
- who could believe than anyone would clear all this away for them?
- and then, having prepared the foundations, they don't bother to rebuild
- and in particular the strange throwing of the city into the sea?
- for this we have to wait 250 years till Alexander the Great came along
- in 333 BC Alexander was sweeping through Syria conquering everyone
- but when he got down to Tyre he found he had a big problem
- the mainland city had been rebuilt, and he quickly conquered it
- but everyone retreated to the island again, and stood laughing at him
- they had developed the island into an impenetrable fortress
- they built walls all round the island, right up to the edge of the sea
- so even if Alexander had a navy (which he didn't) no-one could land
- they could defend the island by firing arrows and fireballs over the walls
So how was all this fulfilled?
- as Ezekiel said, Nebuchadnezzar came and besieged the city in 585BC
- he was adding the whole of Palestine to his empire, including Tyre
- so he came knocking on the city gate but they wouldn't open it
- he killed all the field workers who unluckily were left outside the city
- these were mainly women, like Ezekiel prophesied
- then he set about building siege engines and battering rams
- again, as Ezekiel says
- what Ezekiel didn't say was that the siege would last 13 years
- Nebuhadnezzar couldn't besiege Tyre properly because she was a port
- he didn't have a navy so he couldn't stop them getting food by boats
- so they could hold out forever, unless he could break down her walls
- and eventually he did. His army poured into the city and destroyed it
Alexander decided he had to fight them in the way that he knew best
- with siege engines which could be wheeled up to the wall
- he couldn't roll them across the sea so he decided to extend the land
- he decided on a seemingly potty plan to build a half mile landbridge
- he got all his soldiers to work, tearing down the city, house by house
- they threw all the stones into the sea to build up a roadway
- as they got further out to sea, it became deeper, so progress slowed
- when they ran out of stones, they shovelled up the earth into bags
- they needed every bit of earth they could dig up and carry
- so they dug down till they hit bare rock which they couldn't dig up
- and carried everything to the edge and dropped it in the sea
Ezekiel said he'd get in, though Ezekiel didn't say he would kill them all
- he only mentioned that the field workers would be killed
- which would be insignificant if Nebuchadnezzar killed all the population
- and Nebuchadnezzar didn't, because he couldn't – they'd all gone
- he and his army entered a city which was almost deserted
- because they had all, at the last minute, abandoned the city
- they had jumped in their boats and rowed half a mile to an island
- Nebuchadnezzar, without an navy, could only rave at them
- he destroyed the walls and towers so that the city was useless
- and in the knowledge that the city was no longer a threat, he moved on
26:7 For thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I will bring on Tyre Nebuchadrezzar
king of Babylon, king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and
with horsemen, and a company, and much people. 26:8 He shall kill with the sword
your daughters in the field; and he shall make forts against you, and cast up a mound
against you, and raise up the buckler against you. 26:9 He shall set his battering
engines against your walls, and with his axes he shall break down your towers. 26:10
By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover you: your walls shall
shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wagons, and of the chariots, when he
shall enter into your gates, as men enter into a city in which is made a breach.
Everything is fulfilled perfectly, but what about the next verses?
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The people in the island fortress started to get worried
- so they got in their boats and fired on the workmen till they retreated
- then they landed their own workmen who broke up much of the causeway
- Alexander saw that he needed to do something to stop this happening
- so he called on nations which he'd already conquered, who had ships
- Sidon, Byblus, Rhodes, Lycia, Macedon, Cyprus and other nations
- (remember Ezekiel said they'd be attacked by ‘many nations', v. 3)
- he told them to send ships to protect the causeway and the workmen
- with the help of these nations, Alexander finished the causeway
- then he moved his siege engines and battering rams into place
- and he attacked the walls for seven months till something gave way
- he killed 8 thousand on the island and sold 30 thousand into slavery
26.12b They shall break down your walls, and destroy your pleasant houses;
and they shall lay your stones and your timber and your dust in the midst of
the waters. 26:13 I will cause the noise of your songs to cease; and the sound
of your harps shall be no more heard. 26:14 I will make you a bare rock; you
shall be a place for the spreading of nets; you shall be built no more.
This last bit of the prophesy about the bare rock is the most remarkable
- let me quote a secular history textbook by Philip Myers:
"Alexander the Great… reduced it to ruins (332 BC). She recovered in a measure
from this blow, but never regained the place she had previously held in the world.
The larger part of the site of the once great city is now bare as the top of a rock – a
place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry."
Actually the prediction that no-one would rebuild it is the most amazing
- in some ways one might say that this wasn't fulfilled
- because there was a city of Tyre again, even in Jesus' day
- but it wasn't in the same place - it was on what had been the island
- it just happened to be called the same name
- and, more importantly, it never regained its importance
- this was because the trade routes changed and bypassed Tyre
- instead of going through Tyre they went through Alexandria in Egypt
- because Ptolemy II built a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea in c. 260 BC
- a kind of small Suez canal, but big enough for the ancient ships
- and this made Alexandria the central hub of Middle Eastern trade
- little of the trade which went through Tyre ever came back
- the small fishing town built near ancient Tyre was nothing like old Tyre
- when Ptolemy II changed geographical realities by building the canal
There are hundreds of prophecies like this in the Bible
- all of them are fulfilled with just as much accuracy
- though few of them have details which are as strange as these
- so a skeptic can often say "He could have guessed that would happen"
- but a skeptic cannot say that about this prophecy
- it is a wonderful reminder that God knows the future and plans for it
For the Jews who had seen Jerusalem destroyed, this was very important
- they had to know that God was still in control
- when everything went wrong, they knew that God holds the future
- this doesn't mean that everything we do is predetermined
- we have the freedom to follow God or not to follow him
- to do his will or, tragically, not to do it
- but God is in overall control and can bring about what he wants
- even a seemingly all-powerful city can fall into a forgotten hole in history
– if God decides that it has had its day, it will disappear
- and even a whole nation can become nothing, or survive against the odds
- God is the one who writes history before it happens
Imagine that London was destroyed by a neutron bomb
- the government moved up to Scotland and all businesses moved there
- then a new town was built on the small Isle of Dogs in the Thames
- if it called itself 'London', would you say that London was rebuilt?
- the new London isn't in the same place, isn't the same size
- and most of all it isn't the centre of the financial world of Europe
- and it isn't even the government and business centre of the UK
- is isn't London, any more than the new small town near Tyre was Tyre rebuilt
And God has written our history, but it is a little different for individuals
- because we all have individual choice
- it is as if God has written two histories for us
- he has chosen each one of us and sent his son to die for each one
- but we all have to decide to accept his forgiveness, each one of us
- and if we don't, there is a different history written for us
Tyre was destroyed in exactly the way that God told Ezekiel
- and there is no way Ezekiel could have guessed what would happen
- he might have guessed that Nebuchadnezzar would come
- and he might have guessed that he would besiege Tyre
- it would have seemed incredible that Nebuchadnezzar would defeat it
- and no-one would guess that only the women in the field would be killed
- because who could have predicted that the population would escape
- certainly Nebuchadnezzar didn't predict it.
Tyre's history was determined by the way she reacted to Jerusalem
- when Jerusalem fell, they rejoiced because Jerusalem was a rival
- and our future history in eternity will be determined by our response
- what is our response to Jesus: do we accept his forgiveness or reject it?
- do we follow Jesus or walk away?
- if we follow him, we will end up following God's good plan for us
- if we reject him, and walk away, we will walk away from that plan
- and we will find ourselves in a forgotten hole of history like Tyre
- heading to destruction, forgotten for ever
The really incredible prophecies come 250 years after Ezekiel is dead
- when Alexander did what no-one had ever thought of doing before
- building a causeway out to the island, using the stones and even soil
- the old city was literally thrown into the sea and the rock scraped bare
- this would have sounded like such a silly prophecy to Ezekiel
- he must have been very courageous to include that bit
- and then, incredibly, to say that Tyre wouldn't be rebuilt
- when its geographical position made it so perfect for world export
- but Ezekiel was able to see 350 years into the future
So although God is in charge of history, we are in charge of our own history
- what happens to us in the short term is uncertain to us and unknowable
- but what happens to us in the long term, in eternity, is up to us
- God has already made his plans for us, but we can walk away if we wish
- the tragedy is that many people are stubborn and refuse God's forgiveness
- they are self-sufficient and reject God's plan for them
- don't be one of them.
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