S31 || When Wealth Turns to Dust: The Fall of Tyre a Wealthy City-State || Ezekiel 26:1 - 27:36 || Session 31

Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre stands as one of the most remarkable and precise predictions in biblical literature – a stunning demonstration of divine foreknowledge that unfolded over centuries exactly as foretold.

The ancient city-state of Tyre was no ordinary settlement. By Ezekiel's time, this 2,000-year-old Mediterranean powerhouse had accumulated wealth beyond imagination. With a monopoly on precious purple dye and control over eastern Mediterranean shipping routes, Tyre had established colonies throughout the region and conducted business with kings worldwide. Their ships featured embroidered linen sails, ivory inlays, and the finest imported woods. Zechariah described their prosperity in striking terms: silver "heaped up like dust" and gold like "mire in the streets" – an observation confirmed by gold flecks that remained in Tyre's beach sand into modern times.

Against this backdrop of seemingly invincible prosperity, Ezekiel delivered God's judgment: wave after wave of nations would attack Tyre, ultimately reducing this mighty commercial empire to nothing more than "a bare rock" where fishermen would spread their nets. The prophecy detailed that Nebuchadnezzar would come first, followed by others who would cast Tyre's stones, timber and debris into the sea.

History records the astonishing fulfillment of these predictions. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years, conquering the mainland but unable to take the island fortress. Later, Alexander the Great accomplished what Babylon couldn't by building a causeway to the island using mainland rubble – literally fulfilling the prophecy about casting materials into the sea. By the time of the New Testament, this once-wealthy nation was begging for food supplies, and 17th-century European explorers found nothing but ruins inhabited by about fifty poor families who survived mainly by fishing.

Skeptics attempt to discredit this prophecy, but careful examination reveals its precise fulfillment. The story of Tyre reminds us that God deals with nations as well as individuals, and His word proves trustworthy across millennia. What world powers today might be risking divine judgment through their actions? How might God's patience be working in our own time?

Chapters

• 0:20 Introduction to Ezekiel 26-27
• 1:50 The Great Wealth of Tyre
• 5:20 Ships of Luxury and Global Trade
• 11:28 God's Judgment Against Tyre
• 19:29 Was Ezekiel's Prophecy Fulfilled?
• 24:19 How Tyre Was Literally Destroyed
• 27:18 Final Thoughts on God's Word

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. Today we are in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 26 and 27. We're going to be talking about the people of Tyre, who was one of the cities on the Mediterranean Sea that was very near Israel. We're in the section of Ezekiel where God is giving a condemnation to these nations that are around Israel and Judah that had been giving them trouble over the centuries by attacking them or tempting them to worship idols. God has remembered these things and is dealing with them. Here God deals with nations as well as personal salvation. There is vast swaths of the Bible that deal with nations. In Ezekiel, chapter 26, God is laying out a condemnation, what he's going to do against Tyre In chapter 27,. As a lamentation, he talks in chapter 27, lamenting because of the great wealth. He talks in chapter 27, lamenting because of the great wealth. So I think it's necessary, before we just jump in and deal with the text of Ezekiel 26-27, it gives us some background to all of Tyre will help us to understand the significance of what he's saying. Understand the significance of what he's saying. If we just jump in to Ezekiel, chapter 26 with what's going to happen to it, we don't grasp the significance, To really get a feel for why this is such a huge prophecy. We have to understand the condition of Tyre and the size of it. Now with this we have in chapter 27 a list of the great wealth that's in Tyre. You have to understand by the time that Ezekiel is giving his prophecy here.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Tyre was a 2,000-year-old city-state. Tyre had developed a way to make a purple dye out of a shellfish that was off the coast there and they were the only ones that knew how to make this purple dye. They kept it a trade secret for a very long time. Because of that, it was quite expensive to make and it was very rare. They could sell expensive purple dye to kings and queens throughout the world. They were quite wealthy selling this purple dye to wealthy nations. Kings would buy this very expensive purple cloth, buy this very expensive purple cloth. Tyre, because of that, had controlled the sea lanes in the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, and if you're able to control the shipping in the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean, then you can tax it. So they were taxing and making money off of not only the purple dye, but they were basically a city-state, a very large nation that was controlling all of the shipping and making a quite large amount of money off of all of the trade in the eastern part of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Sea. This would also be a good time to mention, Glenn, that it wasn't just the area of Tyre there, but they had colonized several different city-states along the Mediterranean that helped them with their trade routes that they had. They had Carthage, they had Cadiz, Malta, Cyrus, Sicily and Sardinia. These are the colonizations that they had built up along the perimeter of the Mediterranean, there to control the shipping and the trading all throughout that area. This is what also bolstered their wealth.

Speaker 1: 4:22

So because of that, tyre was not really just a city. It was as large and influential as a nation. Tyre was extremely wealthy and if we go back into the Old Testament we see they sold a lot of materials to David and Solomon for the building of the temple and the palace in Jerusalem. You can read about that. There was a King, hiram of Tyre, in 1 Kings, 5, 6, 9, and 10 that sold tremendous amounts of very expensive woods and very expensive materials for the making of the king's palace and the temple in Jerusalem. Tyre was so large that it controlled all the forests of Lebanon for Hiram. King of Tyre sold lumber to Solomon for the temple. Hiram gave Solomon a huge amount of gold in 2 Chronicles 9.18, just vast sums of gold. Solomon gave Hiram 20 towns and Hiram gave Solomon villages as well. These were very large nation-states that bought and sold large quantities of gold, controlled entire towns and villages, sold very expensive things to each other.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Zechariah 9.3 says Tyre was so wealthy that the language it uses there is heaped up silver like dust and gold like the mire of the streets. This was literally true, for even up to just a few years ago, and maybe even still today, there were still people who could go hand for gold from the sand on the beach in Tyre. They could get little flecks of gold sprinkled into the sand on the beach in Tyre still today, after all these centuries. Tyre was very wealthy, very powerful, very large and very beautiful. When God says in chapter 26 that he's going to turn Tyre into a pile of rubble and then sweep the ground until it's a bare rock, this is a huge, huge prophecy that no one could even fathom that something as large and wealthy as Tyre would be reduced down to a bare rock. That was just a place to spread fishing nets and be quite poor.

Speaker 1: 7:01

The geography of Tyre is one of the reasons why it was so wealthy. The king's palace and the national buildings were on an island that was near the coastline. The island city was rather small, so most of the people lived on the mainland, in the areas around where the island was and all these dozens of cities that were controlled by Tyre. At its height of influence, the city must have been quite large.

Speaker 1: 7:32

After Tyre had been conquered and demolished by Alexander the Great, the size of the city on the mainland was still large and the ancient historian Pliny in 75 AD gave a diameter of the city of about six miles or 9.6 kilometers, according to Pliny. Now this was after it had been reduced. So even by ancient standards, after it had been reduced in the first century, it was down to a diameter of about six miles or nine and a half kilometers Still today. Even now there is a quite large monument called the Tomb of Hiram that is as tall as a three or four story building and it's four miles or six kilometers from the old ruins of the city. Now we'll get to some more specifics of how far this came down to being reduced to. But just to give you an idea of the wealth, steve, can you read the first nine verses of Ezekiel, chapter 27,. It gives us a taste of how much wealth there really was in the nation of Tyre.

Speaker 2: 8:48

Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying and you, son of man, take up a lamentation over Tyre and say to Tyre, who dwells at the entrance to the sea, merchant of the people, to many coastlands. Thus says the Lord, god O Tyre, you have said I am perfect in beauty. Your borders are in the heart of the seas. Your builders have perfected your beauty. They have made all your planks of fir trees from senear. They have taken a cedar from Lebanon to make a mast for you, o oaks from Bashan. They have made your oars With ivory. They have inlaid your deck of boxwood from the coastlands of Cyprus. Your sail was of fine embroidered linen from Egypt, so that it became your distinguishing mark. Your awning was blue and purple from the coastlands of Elisha. The inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were your rowers. Your wise men, o Tyre, were aboard. They were your pilots. The elders of Gabal and her wise men were with you repairing your seams.

Speaker 1: 10:23

So imagine picture in your mind from that description. You've got ships made out of very expensive wood and their sails are linen, not canvas linen, and they're embroidered with many colors. You can just see the wealth in this. It's so wealthy with imported wood, plenty of sailors to support it. And the rest of chapter 27 goes on to talk about armies of men, large amounts of men. They had talked about silver and iron and tin and lead. They had many slaves. They had lots of horses and mules. They had ivory and ebony emeralds and rubies. They had vast wealth. This is the influence and the size of Tyre. I wanted to spend that to give you a picture. This was an extremely wealthy country that controlled a lot of the world at that time, and Ezekiel is going to speak to that. Now let's read the first 14 verses of chapter 26. We're going to get to what God is going to do to this very wealthy nation.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Now, in the eleventh year, on the first of the month, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, son of man, because Tyre has said, concerning Jerusalem aha, the gateway of the peoples is broken. It has opened to me. I shall be filled now that she has laid waste. Therefore, thus says the Lord, god Behold, I am against you, o Tyre, and I will bring up many nations against you. As the sea brings up its waves, they will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock. She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea. For I have spoken, declares the Lord God, and she will become spoil for the nations. Also, her daughters, who are on the mainland, will be slain by the sword, and they will know that I am the Lord.

Speaker 2: 12:26

For, thus says the Lord, god Behold, I will bring upon Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses, chariots, cavalry and a great army. He will slay your daughters on the mainland with the sword and he will make siege walls against you, cast up a ramp against you and raise up a large shield against you. The blow of his battering rams he will direct against your walls and with his axes he will break down your towers Because of the multitude of his horses. The dust raised by them will cover you. Your walls will shake at the noise of cavalry and wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city that is breached, with the hoofs of his horses he will trample all your streets.

Speaker 2: 13:16

He will slay your people with the sword and your strong pillars will come down to the ground Also. They will make a spoil of your riches and a prey of your merchandise, break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses and throw your stones and your timbers and your debris into the water. So I will silence. The sound of your songs and the sound of your harps will be heard no more. I will make you a bare rock. You will be a place for the spreading of nets. You will be built no more, for I, the Lord, have spoken, declares the Lord God.

Speaker 1: 13:54

With this, god gives a very detailed description of the destruction of Tyre, of what he says he's going to do. In verse 2, he says why he's going to do this. It's because Tyre planned to sack Jerusalem. They were going to take the spoils of Jerusalem when it was defeated. Therefore, god says he's going to send in wave after wave of nations, just like the wave of a sea just comes upon you Over time, because it says, wave after wave, it's going to be over a period of years. God says he's going to send in nation after nation that's going to destroy them. One of the nations that God is going to allow to come in is Babylon, and he says that specifically. But God says there's going to be others as well, and he said in there a couple of times Tyre is going to become like a bare rock, a place for fishermen to spread nets, to the point where in verse 14, it says you will be built no more Further.

Speaker 1: 14:59

God goes on in verses 19 and following to say that the city is not going to be inhabited. I'm reading in Ezekiel 26, verse 19. Old and I will make you dwell in the lower parts of the earth, like the ancient waste places, with those who go down to the pit so that you will not be inhabited. But I will set glory in the land of the living. I will bring terrors on you and you will be no more. Though you will be sought, you will never be found again, declares the Lord. God, this is a terrible, horrible destruction. God predicts that their wave after wave of nations is going to destroy them. It will become a bare rock and not be rebuilt, and people will remember it no more. It will be inhabited no more. So this brings up a question, because many of these prophecies were literally fulfilled. One question is that whether the city really was destroyed and whether it was rebuilt simply because we see over in the New Testament, acts 21.3, the apostle Paul sails on a ship to Tyre, gets off of the ship, spends a week there and then continues on his journey. And even today you can go on the internet and see photos of the city of Tyre, which is described as the fifth largest city in Lebanon. So the question comes was this prophecy in Ezekiel fulfilled or not? Did Ezekiel make a false prophecy? How could it be that Tyre was destroyed and uninhabited yet there's been a city there for centuries, and I think we can have an answer to this by having a history lesson that follows this chapter 26 quite closely. First of all, he says if we look at the end of verse 12, god says he's going to take and lay their stones, their timber and dirt into the sea. In verse 14, I will make you like the top of a rock, a bare rock.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Many nations came up against Tyre, but Tyre was again largely destroyed by them, but the island city withstood them. It mentions Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar did indeed come from Babylon and wiped out all the people on the mainland, took the cities that were the daughter cities that were very far away. He tried to lay siege to the island fortress and did so actually for 13 years quite a military operation to lay siege to an island for 13 years but finally gave up and did not take the island. There was a port on the island and another port on the shore, and Nebuchadnezzar took over all the daughter cities, took over the land but was not able to isolate the island from trade. Years go by, alexander the Great came along and he was a superior military genius and he spent considerable time having his men take the rubble that was on the shore and he built a causeway out to the island by laying all this rubble in there, to where he could then drive his siege machines out to the island, take the walls and then take the city. At the time, alexander actually killed thousands of people, crucified 2,000 people on the seashore and took thousands as slaves.

Speaker 1: 19:02

This part of chapter 26 was literally fulfilled. Tyre became a bare rock. Now the skeptics make two accusations. Skeptics make two accusations Nebuchadnezzar. According to the skeptics, nebuchadnezzar failed to take the city and the text seems to, according to the skeptics, seem like he actually took it. Then the city has been inhabited for centuries. Steve, how could we respond to this? Was it partially fulfilled or are the skeptics somehow throwing us smoke?

Speaker 2: 19:34

and mirrors here. Well, with many of the prophecies that are given throughout God's Word, there are sometimes near-term fulfillment and fulfillment that's done a little bit further along, and then fulfillment that's taken place even further in the future, some of them even future to our time that we're speaking here. Most definitely the talk about the rock. There is no city that's out there on that rock today that for sure has been decimated with Alexander and laid bare. So that part of it, you can say for sure, has been fulfilled.

Speaker 2: 20:10

And these other cities, these daughters, the ones, the colonies that I mentioned a while ago, those were defeated, absorbed into Nebuchadnezzar's reign and then also absorbed into other empires that went along. They were no longer controlled by Tyre at all and Tyre itself ceased to become a force as a merchant along the coast and other areas, as well as a city-state. So I think, from various areas and various ways, that you can say that there has been some literal fulfillment of it and also other parts of it as well. But what's the rest of the history? I think you had the rest of the story, don't you, glenn?

Speaker 1: 20:54

Right, exactly. This story of Tyre is one of these ones that there are little chestnut things that the atheists and the skeptics like to bring out and try to show that the prophecy was not fulfilled, but one. They misunderstand the level and scope of Tyre. Again, remember, back in the Old Testament, king Solomon gave 20 cities to Hiram, king of Tyre. Tyre was huge and Babylon really did come in and wipe all that out. The only thing that Babylon didn't take was this small little island city. And think of any large country today. If an enemy came in and took 99% of the land, but they didn't take the actual capital building that was in the downtown of the capital. That would be the equivalent of what happened with Nebuchadnezzar. He took 99% of the land and 99% of their influence, destroyed them as a nation. They never were really the same. They still had the island where the official buildings were and the king's palace was there, but that was really it. They were still there technically as a city, but it really wasn't much near the force that it was. Further again, the answer is in the text Verse 5, she will be a place for the spreading of nets. Verse 14, it repeats it you will be a place for the spreading of nets. Well, fishermen in those days had to dry their nets every day or they would rot and mildew. So every day, at the end of the day, the fishermen would take the nets out of the boat, lay them on the shore to dry and they could mend them and the fishermen would sleep there. They're not going to sail away home and then come back. Somebody had to be there, if not for a few fishermen to spread the nets. So when it says you're not going to be inhabited, you have to take it in the context of this great nation that controlled the entire eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It was indeed literally fulfilled when it was reduced down to a place for fishermen to spread nets. The island fortress was largely today sunk beneath the sea. It's largely sunk. The ports and the bay was filled in with silt. So verse 19 was literally fulfilled when it says that it sank beneath the waves. The two ports have silted in and are unusable today.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Alexander, we already told you he took that last 1% when he built the land bridge so that he could take his siege machines over there. His army killed, according to the historians, 8,000 people in the streets, crucified 2,000 on the seashore and sold tens of thousands into slavery. After Alexander, tyre was never again near what it was. To really see this, there was a historian named Martha Joukowsky who wrote a book that was a collection of essays, and she said this in the book, quote Henry Mondrell wrote in 1697, you see nothing here.

Speaker 1: 24:19

He had visited Tyre and was reporting back to Europe. You see nothing here but a mere babble of broken walls, pillars, vaults, there being not so much as one unbroken house left. A few years later, constantine Valny passed through Tyre and noted that the port was so silted in that children could wade from one ruined tower to the other. The population then numbered a mere 50 or 60 families who lived in poverty, subsisting on the produce of their lands and by fishing. Close quote.

Speaker 1: 24:55

So Ezekiel 26 was literally fulfilled. You have to go back to the beginning of the chapter, remember. He said I'm going to send nation after nation, wave after wave that will destroy you. So yes, it took hundreds of years for it to happen, but God said it was going to take many years for the nations to come. The description there of Babylon coming in Babylon was the one that reduced it down to just this island and then Alexander came and took the island and after that, yes, there's a city there today, but it's not on the site of the old one. You can still see the ruins. In fact, the ruins of the old city are the only tourist attraction that small town can have, which is to come in and see the ruins of the old city. We have it literally fulfilled.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Tyre had been a well-fortified, strong city and by the time of the New Testament, in the first century Acts 12.20, the people of Tyre are begging the authorities for food because the king had cut off their food supply and they were going to Jerusalem begging for food. So we had this once mighty nation with, think of it, linen sails that were embroidered, made out of ivory in their cities and so much gold that it was literally dust in the streets was. By the time of the first century, when the apostle was there, they were begging for food. By the time of the Middle Ages, when the European explorers came, it was literally a place for the spreading of nets. Steve, all this is very amazing because it was literally fulfilled.

Speaker 2: 26:38

What you're describing there, glenn, is that the literal fulfillment was that Tyre as a city-state and an influence, with all of its colonies in the Mediterranean area and its trade, were completely decimated and completely taken away. It was never, ever a force on its own. And today, while the city may be named Tyre, it's part of a country by the name of Lebanon, so it's really in name only. It's not a force to be reckoned with or a nation of its own. So that's how the literal fulfillment of this was taken care of.

Speaker 1: 27:16

Oh, how amazing the Word of God is. We can take it to the bank because what God promises will come to be, and all these prophecies were literally fulfilled. We'll stop today because of time, but God is still dealing with nations and we're going to see that next time.

Speaker 2: 27:34

On Reasoning Through the Bible, Thank you so much for watching and listening and, as always, may God bless you.