September 22, 2025 • 27 mins
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?
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible.
Today we are in the book ofEzekiel, chapters 26 and 27.
We're going to be talking aboutthe people of Tyre, who was one
of the cities on theMediterranean Sea that was very
near Israel.
We're in the section of Ezekielwhere God is giving a
condemnation to these nationsthat are around Israel and Judah
(00:44):
that had been giving themtrouble over the centuries by
attacking them or tempting themto worship idols.
God has remembered these thingsand is dealing with them.
Here God deals with nations aswell as personal salvation.
There is vast swaths of theBible that deal with nations.
(01:06):
In Ezekiel, chapter 26, God islaying out a condemnation, what
he's going to do against Tyre Inchapter 27,.
As a lamentation, he talks inchapter 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
(01:30):
with the text of Ezekiel 26-27,it gives us some background to
all of Tyre will help us tounderstand the significance of
what he's saying.
Understand the significance ofwhat he's saying.
(01:50):
If we just jump in to Ezekiel,chapter 26 with what's going to
happen to it, we don't grasp thesignificance, To really get a
feel for why this is such a hugeprophecy.
We have to understand thecondition of Tyre and the size
of it.
Now with this we have inchapter 27 a list of the great
(02:11):
wealth that's in Tyre.
You have to understand by thetime that Ezekiel is giving his
prophecy here.
Tyre was a 2,000-year-oldcity-state.
Tyre had developed a way tomake a purple dye out of a
shellfish that was off the coastthere and they were the only
(02:33):
ones that knew how to make thispurple dye.
They kept it a trade secret fora very long time.
Because of that, it was quiteexpensive to make and it was
very rare.
They could sell expensivepurple dye to kings and queens
throughout the world.
They were quite wealthy sellingthis purple dye to wealthy
(02:58):
nations.
Kings would buy this veryexpensive purple cloth, buy this
very expensive purple cloth.
Tyre, because of that, hadcontrolled the sea lanes in the
entire eastern part of theMediterranean Sea, and if you're
able to control the shipping inthe entire eastern part of the
(03:18):
Mediterranean, then you can taxit.
So they were taxing and makingmoney off of not only the purple
dye, but they were basically acity-state, a very large nation
that was controlling all of theshipping and making a quite
large amount of money off of allof the trade in the eastern
(03:42):
part of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Sea.
This would also be a good timeto mention, Glenn, that it
wasn't just the area of Tyrethere, but they had colonized
several different city-statesalong the Mediterranean that
helped them with their traderoutes that they had.
They had Carthage, they hadCadiz, Malta, Cyrus, Sicily and
(04:07):
Sardinia.
These are the colonizationsthat they had built up along the
perimeter of the Mediterranean,there to control the shipping
and the trading all throughoutthat area.
This is what also bolsteredtheir wealth.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So because of that, tyre was not really just a city.
It was as large and influentialas a nation.
Tyre was extremely wealthy andif we go back into the Old
Testament we see they sold a lotof materials to David and
Solomon for the building of thetemple and the palace in
(04:43):
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 ofvery expensive woods and very
expensive materials for themaking of the king's palace and
(05:03):
the temple in Jerusalem.
Tyre was so large that itcontrolled all the forests of
Lebanon for Hiram.
King of Tyre sold lumber toSolomon for the temple.
Hiram gave Solomon a hugeamount of gold in 2 Chronicles
9.18, just vast sums of gold.
(05:26):
Solomon gave Hiram 20 towns andHiram gave Solomon villages as
well.
These were very largenation-states that bought and
sold large quantities of gold,controlled entire towns and
villages, sold very expensivethings to each other.
(05:46):
Zechariah 9.3 says Tyre was sowealthy that the language it
uses there is heaped up silverlike dust and gold like the mire
of the streets.
This was literally true, foreven up to just a few years ago,
and maybe even still today,there were still people who
(06:08):
could go hand for gold from thesand on the beach in Tyre.
They could get little flecks ofgold sprinkled into the sand on
the beach in Tyre still today,after all these centuries.
Tyre was very wealthy, verypowerful, very large and very
(06:30):
beautiful.
When God says in chapter 26that he's going to turn Tyre
into a pile of rubble and thensweep the ground until it's a
bare rock, this is a huge, hugeprophecy that no one could even
fathom that something as largeand wealthy as Tyre would be
(06:53):
reduced down to a bare rock.
That was just a place to spreadfishing nets and be quite poor.
The geography of Tyre is one ofthe reasons why it was so
wealthy.
The king's palace and thenational buildings were on an
island that was near thecoastline.
The island city was rathersmall, so most of the people
(07:18):
lived on the mainland, in theareas around where the island
was and all these dozens ofcities that were controlled by
Tyre.
At its height of influence, thecity must have been quite large
.
After Tyre had been conqueredand demolished by Alexander the
Great, the size of the city onthe mainland was still large and
(07:41):
the ancient historian Pliny in75 AD gave a diameter of the
city of about six miles or 9.6kilometers, according to Pliny.
Now this was after it had beenreduced.
So even by ancient standards,after it had been reduced in the
(08:02):
first century, it was down to adiameter of about six miles or
nine and a half kilometers Stilltoday.
Even now there is a quite largemonument called the Tomb of
Hiram that is as tall as a threeor four story building and it's
four miles or six kilometersfrom the old ruins of the city.
(08:25):
Now we'll get to some morespecifics of how far this came
down to being reduced to.
But just to give you an idea ofthe wealth, steve, can you read
the first nine verses ofEzekiel, chapter 27,.
It gives us a taste of how muchwealth there really was in the
(08:47):
nation of Tyre.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying and
you, son of man, take up alamentation over Tyre and say to
Tyre, who dwells at theentrance to the sea, merchant of
the people, to many coastlands.
Thus says the Lord, god O Tyre,you have said I am perfect in
(09:11):
beauty.
Your borders are in the heartof the seas.
Your builders have perfectedyour beauty.
They have made all your planksof fir trees from senear.
They have taken a cedar fromLebanon to make a mast for you,
o oaks from Bashan.
(09:32):
They have made your oars Withivory.
They have inlaid your deck ofboxwood from the coastlands of
Cyprus.
Your sail was of fineembroidered linen from Egypt, so
that it became yourdistinguishing mark.
Your awning was blue and purplefrom the coastlands of Elisha.
(09:52):
The inhabitants of Sidon andArvad were your rowers.
Your wise men, o Tyre, wereaboard.
They were your pilots.
The elders of Gabal and herwise 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 ofvery expensive wood and their
sails are linen, not canvaslinen, and they're embroidered
with many colors.
You can just see the wealth inthis.
It's so wealthy with importedwood, plenty of sailors to
support it.
And the rest of chapter 27 goeson to talk about armies of men,
(10:44):
large amounts of men.
They had talked about silverand iron and tin and lead.
They had many slaves.
They had lots of horses andmules.
They had ivory and ebonyemeralds and rubies.
They had vast wealth.
This is the influence and thesize of Tyre.
(11:04):
I wanted to spend that to giveyou a picture.
This was an extremely wealthycountry that controlled a lot of
the world at that time, andEzekiel is going to speak to
that.
Now let's read the first 14verses of chapter 26.
We're going to get to what Godis going to do to this very
(11:27):
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, concerningJerusalem aha, the gateway of
the peoples is broken.
It has opened to me.
I shall be filled now that shehas laid waste.
Therefore, thus says the Lord,god Behold, I am against you, o
(11:53):
Tyre, and I will bring up manynations 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 barerock.
She will be a place for thespreading of nets in the midst
of the sea.
For I have spoken, declares theLord God, and she will become
(12:17):
spoil for the nations.
Also, her daughters, who are onthe mainland, will be slain by
the sword, and they will knowthat I am the Lord.
For, thus says the Lord, godBehold, I will bring upon Tyre
from the north Nebuchadnezzar,king of Babylon, king of kings,
with horses, chariots, cavalryand a great army.
(12:38):
He will slay your daughters onthe mainland with the sword and
he will make siege walls againstyou, cast up a ramp against you
and raise up a large shieldagainst you.
The blow of his battering ramshe will direct against your
walls and with his axes he willbreak down your towers Because
of the multitude of his horses.
(13:00):
The dust raised by them willcover you.
Your walls will shake at thenoise of cavalry and wagons and
chariots when he enters yourgates as men enter a city that
is breached, with the hoofs ofhis horses he will trample all
your streets.
He will slay your people withthe sword and your strong
(13:20):
pillars will come down to theground Also.
They will make a spoil of yourriches and a prey of your
merchandise, break down yourwalls and destroy your pleasant
houses and throw your stones andyour timbers and your debris
into the water.
So I will silence.
The sound of your songs and thesound of your harps will be
(13:41):
heard no more.
I will make you a bare rock.
You will be a place for thespreading of nets.
You will be built no more, forI, 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 whathe says he's going to do.
In verse 2, he says why he'sgoing to do this.
It's because Tyre planned tosack Jerusalem.
They were going to take thespoils of Jerusalem when it was
defeated.
Therefore, god says he's goingto send in wave after wave of
(14:18):
nations, just like the wave of asea just comes upon you Over
time, because it says, waveafter wave, it's going to be
over a period of years.
God says he's going to send innation after nation that's going
to destroy them.
One of the nations that God isgoing to allow to come in is
Babylon, and he says thatspecifically.
(14:40):
But God says there's going tobe others as well, and he said
in there a couple of times Tyreis going to become like a bare
rock, a place for fishermen tospread nets, to the point where
in verse 14, it says you will bebuilt no more Further.
God goes on in verses 19 andfollowing to say that the city
(15:04):
is not going to be inhabited.
I'm reading in Ezekiel 26,verse 19.
(15:24):
Old and I will make you dwellin the lower parts of the earth,
like the ancient waste places,with those who go down to the
pit so that you will not beinhabited.
But I will set glory in theland of the living.
I will bring terrors on you andyou will be no more.
Though you will be sought, youwill never be found again,
(15:47):
declares the Lord.
God, this is a terrible,horrible destruction.
God predicts that their waveafter wave of nations is going
to destroy them.
It will become a bare rock andnot 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
(16:11):
were literally fulfilled.
One question is that whetherthe city really was destroyed
and whether it was rebuiltsimply 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
(16:36):
continues on his journey.
And even today you can go onthe internet and see photos of
the city of Tyre, which isdescribed as the fifth largest
city in Lebanon.
So the question comes was thisprophecy in Ezekiel fulfilled or
not?
Did Ezekiel make a falseprophecy?
(16:56):
How could it be that Tyre wasdestroyed and uninhabited yet
there's been a city there forcenturies, and I think we can
have an answer to this by havinga history lesson that follows
this chapter 26 quite closely.
First of all, he says if welook at the end of verse 12, god
(17:17):
says he's going to take and laytheir stones, their timber and
dirt into the sea.
In verse 14, I will make youlike the top of a rock, a bare
rock.
Many nations came up againstTyre, but Tyre was again largely
destroyed by them, but theisland city withstood them.
(17:38):
It mentions Nebuchadnezzar, andNebuchadnezzar did indeed come
from Babylon and wiped out allthe people on the mainland, took
the cities that were thedaughter cities that were very
far away.
He tried to lay siege to theisland fortress and did so
actually for 13 years quite amilitary operation to lay siege
(18:03):
to an island for 13 years butfinally gave up and did not take
the island.
There was a port on the islandand another port on the shore,
and Nebuchadnezzar took over allthe daughter cities, took over
the land but was not able toisolate the island from trade.
Years go by, alexander theGreat came along and he was a
(18:27):
superior military genius and hespent considerable time having
his men take the rubble that wason the shore and he built a
causeway out to the island bylaying all this rubble in there,
to where he could then drivehis siege machines out to the
(18:47):
island, take the walls and thentake the city.
At the time, alexander actuallykilled thousands of people,
crucified 2,000 people on theseashore and took thousands as
slaves.
This part of chapter 26 wasliterally fulfilled.
Tyre became a bare rock.
(19:09):
Now the skeptics make twoaccusations.
Skeptics make two accusationsNebuchadnezzar.
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 beeninhabited for centuries.
Steve, how could we respond tothis?
(19:29):
Was it partially fulfilled orare the skeptics somehow
throwing us smoke?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
and mirrors here.
Well, with many of theprophecies that are given
throughout God's Word, there aresometimes near-term fulfillment
and fulfillment that's done alittle bit further along, and
then fulfillment that's takenplace even further in the future
, some of them even future toour time that we're speaking
here.
Most definitely the talk aboutthe rock.
(19:56):
There is no city that's outthere on that rock today that
for sure has been decimated withAlexander and laid bare.
So that part of it, you can sayfor sure, has been fulfilled.
And these other cities, thesedaughters, the ones, the
colonies that I mentioned awhile ago, those were defeated,
(20:17):
absorbed into Nebuchadnezzar'sreign and then also absorbed
into other empires that wentalong.
They were no longer controlledby Tyre at all and Tyre itself
ceased to become a force as amerchant along the coast and
other areas, as well as acity-state.
(20:38):
So I think, from various areasand various ways, that you can
say that there has been someliteral fulfillment of it and
also other parts of it as well.
But what's the rest of thehistory?
I think you had the rest of thestory, don't you, glenn?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Right, exactly.
This story of Tyre is one ofthese ones that there are little
chestnut things that theatheists and the skeptics like
to bring out and try to showthat the prophecy was not
fulfilled, but one.
They misunderstand the leveland scope of Tyre.
Again, remember, back in theOld Testament, king Solomon gave
20 cities to Hiram, king ofTyre.
(21:17):
Tyre was huge and Babylonreally did come in and wipe all
that out.
The only thing that Babylondidn't take was this small
little island city.
And think of any large countrytoday.
If an enemy came in and took99% of the land, but they didn't
take the actual capitalbuilding that was in the
(21:40):
downtown of the capital.
That would be the equivalent ofwhat 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 wherethe official buildings were and
the king's palace was there,but that was really it.
(22:02):
They were still theretechnically as a city, but it
really wasn't much near theforce that it was.
Further again, the answer is inthe text Verse 5, she will be a
place for the spreading of nets.
Verse 14, it repeats it youwill be a place for the
spreading of nets.
Well, fishermen in those dayshad to dry their nets every day
(22:28):
or they would rot and mildew.
So every day, at the end of theday, the fishermen would take
the nets out of the boat, laythem on the shore to dry and
they could mend them and thefishermen would sleep there.
They're not going to sail awayhome and then come back.
Somebody had to be there, ifnot for a few fishermen to
(22:49):
spread the nets.
So when it says you're notgoing to be inhabited, you have
to take it in the context ofthis great nation that
controlled the entire easternend of the Mediterranean Sea.
It was indeed literallyfulfilled when it was reduced
down to a place for fishermen tospread nets.
The island fortress was largelytoday sunk beneath the sea.
(23:13):
It's largely sunk.
The ports and the bay wasfilled in with silt.
So verse 19 was literallyfulfilled when it says that it
sank beneath the waves.
The two ports have silted inand are unusable today.
Alexander, we already told youhe took that last 1% when he
(23:36):
built the land bridge so that hecould take his siege machines
over there.
His army killed, according tothe historians, 8,000 people in
the streets, crucified 2,000 onthe seashore and sold tens of
thousands into slavery.
After Alexander, tyre was neveragain near what it was.
(23:59):
To really see this, there was ahistorian named Martha
Joukowsky who wrote a book thatwas a collection of essays, and
she said this in the book, quoteHenry Mondrell wrote in 1697,
you see nothing here.
He had visited Tyre and wasreporting back to Europe.
(24:21):
You see nothing here but a merebabble of broken walls, pillars
, vaults, there being not somuch as one unbroken house left.
A few years later, constantineValny passed through Tyre and
noted that the port was sosilted in that children could
wade from one ruined tower tothe other.
(24:44):
The population then numbered amere 50 or 60 families who lived
in poverty, subsisting on theproduce of their lands and by
fishing.
Close quote.
So Ezekiel 26 was literallyfulfilled.
You have to go back to thebeginning of the chapter,
remember.
He said I'm going to sendnation after nation, wave after
(25:05):
wave that will destroy you.
So yes, it took hundreds ofyears for it to happen, but God
said it was going to take manyyears for the nations to come.
The description there ofBabylon coming in Babylon was
the one that reduced it down tojust this island and then
Alexander came and took theisland and after that, yes,
(25:28):
there's a city there today, butit's not on the site of the old
one.
You can still see the ruins.
In fact, the ruins of the oldcity are the only tourist
attraction that small town canhave, which is to come in and
see the ruins of the old city.
We have it literally fulfilled.
Tyre had been a well-fortified,strong city and by the time of
(25:49):
the New Testament, in the firstcentury Acts 12.20, the people
of Tyre are begging theauthorities for food because the
king had cut off their foodsupply and they were going to
Jerusalem begging for food.
So we had this once mightynation with, think of it, linen
(26:09):
sails that were embroidered,made out of ivory in their
cities and so much gold that itwas literally dust in the
streets was.
By the time of the firstcentury, when the apostle was
there, they were begging forfood.
By the time of the Middle Ages,when the European explorers
(26:30):
came, it was literally a placefor the spreading of nets.
Steve, all this is very amazingbecause it was literally
fulfilled.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
What you're describing there, glenn, is that
the literal fulfillment wasthat Tyre as a city-state and an
influence, with all of itscolonies in the Mediterranean
area and its trade, werecompletely decimated and
completely taken away.
It was never, ever a force onits own.
(26:58):
And today, while the city maybe 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 reckonedwith or a nation of its own.
So that's how the literalfulfillment of this was taken
care of.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Oh, how amazing the Word of God is.
We can take it to the bankbecause what God promises will
come to be, and all theseprophecies were literally
fulfilled.
We'll stop today because oftime, but God is still dealing
with nations and we're going tosee that next time.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
On Reasoning Through the Bible, Thank you so much for
watching and listening and, asalways, may God bless you.
Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible.
Today we are in the book ofEzekiel, chapters 26 and 27.
We're going to be talking aboutthe people of Tyre, who was one
of the cities on theMediterranean Sea that was very
near Israel.
We're in the section of Ezekielwhere God is giving a
condemnation to these nationsthat are around Israel and Judah
(00:44):
that had been giving themtrouble over the centuries by
attacking them or tempting themto worship idols.
God has remembered these thingsand is dealing with them.
Here God deals with nations aswell as personal salvation.
There is vast swaths of theBible that deal with nations.
(01:06):
In Ezekiel, chapter 26, God islaying out a condemnation, what
he's going to do against Tyre Inchapter 27,.
As a lamentation, he talks inchapter 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
(01:30):
with the text of Ezekiel 26-27,it gives us some background to
all of Tyre will help us tounderstand the significance of
what he's saying.
Understand the significance ofwhat he's saying.
(01:50):
If we just jump in to Ezekiel,chapter 26 with what's going to
happen to it, we don't grasp thesignificance, To really get a
feel for why this is such a hugeprophecy.
We have to understand thecondition of Tyre and the size
of it.
Now with this we have inchapter 27 a list of the great
(02:11):
wealth that's in Tyre.
You have to understand by thetime that Ezekiel is giving his
prophecy here.
Tyre was a 2,000-year-oldcity-state.
Tyre had developed a way tomake a purple dye out of a
shellfish that was off the coastthere and they were the only
(02:33):
ones that knew how to make thispurple dye.
They kept it a trade secret fora very long time.
Because of that, it was quiteexpensive to make and it was
very rare.
They could sell expensivepurple dye to kings and queens
throughout the world.
They were quite wealthy sellingthis purple dye to wealthy
(02:58):
nations.
Kings would buy this veryexpensive purple cloth, buy this
very expensive purple cloth.
Tyre, because of that, hadcontrolled the sea lanes in the
entire eastern part of theMediterranean Sea, and if you're
able to control the shipping inthe entire eastern part of the
(03:18):
Mediterranean, then you can taxit.
So they were taxing and makingmoney off of not only the purple
dye, but they were basically acity-state, a very large nation
that was controlling all of theshipping and making a quite
large amount of money off of allof the trade in the eastern
(03:42):
part of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Sea.
This would also be a good timeto mention, Glenn, that it
wasn't just the area of Tyrethere, but they had colonized
several different city-statesalong the Mediterranean that
helped them with their traderoutes that they had.
They had Carthage, they hadCadiz, Malta, Cyrus, Sicily and
(04:07):
Sardinia.
These are the colonizationsthat they had built up along the
perimeter of the Mediterranean,there to control the shipping
and the trading all throughoutthat area.
This is what also bolsteredtheir wealth.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So because of that, tyre was not really just a city.
It was as large and influentialas a nation.
Tyre was extremely wealthy andif we go back into the Old
Testament we see they sold a lotof materials to David and
Solomon for the building of thetemple and the palace in
(04:43):
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 ofvery expensive woods and very
expensive materials for themaking of the king's palace and
(05:03):
the temple in Jerusalem.
Tyre was so large that itcontrolled all the forests of
Lebanon for Hiram.
King of Tyre sold lumber toSolomon for the temple.
Hiram gave Solomon a hugeamount of gold in 2 Chronicles
9.18, just vast sums of gold.
(05:26):
Solomon gave Hiram 20 towns andHiram gave Solomon villages as
well.
These were very largenation-states that bought and
sold large quantities of gold,controlled entire towns and
villages, sold very expensivethings to each other.
(05:46):
Zechariah 9.3 says Tyre was sowealthy that the language it
uses there is heaped up silverlike dust and gold like the mire
of the streets.
This was literally true, foreven up to just a few years ago,
and maybe even still today,there were still people who
(06:08):
could go hand for gold from thesand on the beach in Tyre.
They could get little flecks ofgold sprinkled into the sand on
the beach in Tyre still today,after all these centuries.
Tyre was very wealthy, verypowerful, very large and very
(06:30):
beautiful.
When God says in chapter 26that he's going to turn Tyre
into a pile of rubble and thensweep the ground until it's a
bare rock, this is a huge, hugeprophecy that no one could even
fathom that something as largeand wealthy as Tyre would be
(06:53):
reduced down to a bare rock.
That was just a place to spreadfishing nets and be quite poor.
The geography of Tyre is one ofthe reasons why it was so
wealthy.
The king's palace and thenational buildings were on an
island that was near thecoastline.
The island city was rathersmall, so most of the people
(07:18):
lived on the mainland, in theareas around where the island
was and all these dozens ofcities that were controlled by
Tyre.
At its height of influence, thecity must have been quite large
.
After Tyre had been conqueredand demolished by Alexander the
Great, the size of the city onthe mainland was still large and
(07:41):
the ancient historian Pliny in75 AD gave a diameter of the
city of about six miles or 9.6kilometers, according to Pliny.
Now this was after it had beenreduced.
So even by ancient standards,after it had been reduced in the
(08:02):
first century, it was down to adiameter of about six miles or
nine and a half kilometers Stilltoday.
Even now there is a quite largemonument called the Tomb of
Hiram that is as tall as a threeor four story building and it's
four miles or six kilometersfrom the old ruins of the city.
(08:25):
Now we'll get to some morespecifics of how far this came
down to being reduced to.
But just to give you an idea ofthe wealth, steve, can you read
the first nine verses ofEzekiel, chapter 27,.
It gives us a taste of how muchwealth there really was in the
(08:47):
nation of Tyre.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying and
you, son of man, take up alamentation over Tyre and say to
Tyre, who dwells at theentrance to the sea, merchant of
the people, to many coastlands.
Thus says the Lord, god O Tyre,you have said I am perfect in
(09:11):
beauty.
Your borders are in the heartof the seas.
Your builders have perfectedyour beauty.
They have made all your planksof fir trees from senear.
They have taken a cedar fromLebanon to make a mast for you,
o oaks from Bashan.
(09:32):
They have made your oars Withivory.
They have inlaid your deck ofboxwood from the coastlands of
Cyprus.
Your sail was of fineembroidered linen from Egypt, so
that it became yourdistinguishing mark.
Your awning was blue and purplefrom the coastlands of Elisha.
(09:52):
The inhabitants of Sidon andArvad were your rowers.
Your wise men, o Tyre, wereaboard.
They were your pilots.
The elders of Gabal and herwise 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 ofvery expensive wood and their
sails are linen, not canvaslinen, and they're embroidered
with many colors.
You can just see the wealth inthis.
It's so wealthy with importedwood, plenty of sailors to
support it.
And the rest of chapter 27 goeson to talk about armies of men,
(10:44):
large amounts of men.
They had talked about silverand iron and tin and lead.
They had many slaves.
They had lots of horses andmules.
They had ivory and ebonyemeralds and rubies.
They had vast wealth.
This is the influence and thesize of Tyre.
(11:04):
I wanted to spend that to giveyou a picture.
This was an extremely wealthycountry that controlled a lot of
the world at that time, andEzekiel is going to speak to
that.
Now let's read the first 14verses of chapter 26.
We're going to get to what Godis going to do to this very
(11:27):
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, concerningJerusalem aha, the gateway of
the peoples is broken.
It has opened to me.
I shall be filled now that shehas laid waste.
Therefore, thus says the Lord,god Behold, I am against you, o
(11:53):
Tyre, and I will bring up manynations 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 barerock.
She will be a place for thespreading of nets in the midst
of the sea.
For I have spoken, declares theLord God, and she will become
(12:17):
spoil for the nations.
Also, her daughters, who are onthe mainland, will be slain by
the sword, and they will knowthat I am the Lord.
For, thus says the Lord, godBehold, I will bring upon Tyre
from the north Nebuchadnezzar,king of Babylon, king of kings,
with horses, chariots, cavalryand a great army.
(12:38):
He will slay your daughters onthe mainland with the sword and
he will make siege walls againstyou, cast up a ramp against you
and raise up a large shieldagainst you.
The blow of his battering ramshe will direct against your
walls and with his axes he willbreak down your towers Because
of the multitude of his horses.
(13:00):
The dust raised by them willcover you.
Your walls will shake at thenoise of cavalry and wagons and
chariots when he enters yourgates as men enter a city that
is breached, with the hoofs ofhis horses he will trample all
your streets.
He will slay your people withthe sword and your strong
(13:20):
pillars will come down to theground Also.
They will make a spoil of yourriches and a prey of your
merchandise, break down yourwalls and destroy your pleasant
houses and throw your stones andyour timbers and your debris
into the water.
So I will silence.
The sound of your songs and thesound of your harps will be
(13:41):
heard no more.
I will make you a bare rock.
You will be a place for thespreading of nets.
You will be built no more, forI, 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 whathe says he's going to do.
In verse 2, he says why he'sgoing to do this.
It's because Tyre planned tosack Jerusalem.
They were going to take thespoils of Jerusalem when it was
defeated.
Therefore, god says he's goingto send in wave after wave of
(14:18):
nations, just like the wave of asea just comes upon you Over
time, because it says, waveafter wave, it's going to be
over a period of years.
God says he's going to send innation after nation that's going
to destroy them.
One of the nations that God isgoing to allow to come in is
Babylon, and he says thatspecifically.
(14:40):
But God says there's going tobe others as well, and he said
in there a couple of times Tyreis going to become like a bare
rock, a place for fishermen tospread nets, to the point where
in verse 14, it says you will bebuilt no more Further.
God goes on in verses 19 andfollowing to say that the city
(15:04):
is not going to be inhabited.
I'm reading in Ezekiel 26,verse 19.
(15:24):
Old and I will make you dwellin the lower parts of the earth,
like the ancient waste places,with those who go down to the
pit so that you will not beinhabited.
But I will set glory in theland of the living.
I will bring terrors on you andyou will be no more.
Though you will be sought, youwill never be found again,
(15:47):
declares the Lord.
God, this is a terrible,horrible destruction.
God predicts that their waveafter wave of nations is going
to destroy them.
It will become a bare rock andnot 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
(16:11):
were literally fulfilled.
One question is that whetherthe city really was destroyed
and whether it was rebuiltsimply 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
(16:36):
continues on his journey.
And even today you can go onthe internet and see photos of
the city of Tyre, which isdescribed as the fifth largest
city in Lebanon.
So the question comes was thisprophecy in Ezekiel fulfilled or
not?
Did Ezekiel make a falseprophecy?
(16:56):
How could it be that Tyre wasdestroyed and uninhabited yet
there's been a city there forcenturies, and I think we can
have an answer to this by havinga history lesson that follows
this chapter 26 quite closely.
First of all, he says if welook at the end of verse 12, god
(17:17):
says he's going to take and laytheir stones, their timber and
dirt into the sea.
In verse 14, I will make youlike the top of a rock, a bare
rock.
Many nations came up againstTyre, but Tyre was again largely
destroyed by them, but theisland city withstood them.
(17:38):
It mentions Nebuchadnezzar, andNebuchadnezzar did indeed come
from Babylon and wiped out allthe people on the mainland, took
the cities that were thedaughter cities that were very
far away.
He tried to lay siege to theisland fortress and did so
actually for 13 years quite amilitary operation to lay siege
(18:03):
to an island for 13 years butfinally gave up and did not take
the island.
There was a port on the islandand another port on the shore,
and Nebuchadnezzar took over allthe daughter cities, took over
the land but was not able toisolate the island from trade.
Years go by, alexander theGreat came along and he was a
(18:27):
superior military genius and hespent considerable time having
his men take the rubble that wason the shore and he built a
causeway out to the island bylaying all this rubble in there,
to where he could then drivehis siege machines out to the
(18:47):
island, take the walls and thentake the city.
At the time, alexander actuallykilled thousands of people,
crucified 2,000 people on theseashore and took thousands as
slaves.
This part of chapter 26 wasliterally fulfilled.
Tyre became a bare rock.
(19:09):
Now the skeptics make twoaccusations.
Skeptics make two accusationsNebuchadnezzar.
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 beeninhabited for centuries.
Steve, how could we respond tothis?
(19:29):
Was it partially fulfilled orare the skeptics somehow
throwing us smoke?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
and mirrors here.
Well, with many of theprophecies that are given
throughout God's Word, there aresometimes near-term fulfillment
and fulfillment that's done alittle bit further along, and
then fulfillment that's takenplace even further in the future
, some of them even future toour time that we're speaking
here.
Most definitely the talk aboutthe rock.
(19:56):
There is no city that's outthere on that rock today that
for sure has been decimated withAlexander and laid bare.
So that part of it, you can sayfor sure, has been fulfilled.
And these other cities, thesedaughters, the ones, the
colonies that I mentioned awhile ago, those were defeated,
(20:17):
absorbed into Nebuchadnezzar'sreign and then also absorbed
into other empires that wentalong.
They were no longer controlledby Tyre at all and Tyre itself
ceased to become a force as amerchant along the coast and
other areas, as well as acity-state.
(20:38):
So I think, from various areasand various ways, that you can
say that there has been someliteral fulfillment of it and
also other parts of it as well.
But what's the rest of thehistory?
I think you had the rest of thestory, don't you, glenn?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Right, exactly.
This story of Tyre is one ofthese ones that there are little
chestnut things that theatheists and the skeptics like
to bring out and try to showthat the prophecy was not
fulfilled, but one.
They misunderstand the leveland scope of Tyre.
Again, remember, back in theOld Testament, king Solomon gave
20 cities to Hiram, king ofTyre.
(21:17):
Tyre was huge and Babylonreally did come in and wipe all
that out.
The only thing that Babylondidn't take was this small
little island city.
And think of any large countrytoday.
If an enemy came in and took99% of the land, but they didn't
take the actual capitalbuilding that was in the
(21:40):
downtown of the capital.
That would be the equivalent ofwhat 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 wherethe official buildings were and
the king's palace was there,but that was really it.
(22:02):
They were still theretechnically as a city, but it
really wasn't much near theforce that it was.
Further again, the answer is inthe text Verse 5, she will be a
place for the spreading of nets.
Verse 14, it repeats it youwill be a place for the
spreading of nets.
Well, fishermen in those dayshad to dry their nets every day
(22:28):
or they would rot and mildew.
So every day, at the end of theday, the fishermen would take
the nets out of the boat, laythem on the shore to dry and
they could mend them and thefishermen would sleep there.
They're not going to sail awayhome and then come back.
Somebody had to be there, ifnot for a few fishermen to
(22:49):
spread the nets.
So when it says you're notgoing to be inhabited, you have
to take it in the context ofthis great nation that
controlled the entire easternend of the Mediterranean Sea.
It was indeed literallyfulfilled when it was reduced
down to a place for fishermen tospread nets.
The island fortress was largelytoday sunk beneath the sea.
(23:13):
It's largely sunk.
The ports and the bay wasfilled in with silt.
So verse 19 was literallyfulfilled when it says that it
sank beneath the waves.
The two ports have silted inand are unusable today.
Alexander, we already told youhe took that last 1% when he
(23:36):
built the land bridge so that hecould take his siege machines
over there.
His army killed, according tothe historians, 8,000 people in
the streets, crucified 2,000 onthe seashore and sold tens of
thousands into slavery.
After Alexander, tyre was neveragain near what it was.
(23:59):
To really see this, there was ahistorian named Martha
Joukowsky who wrote a book thatwas a collection of essays, and
she said this in the book, quoteHenry Mondrell wrote in 1697,
you see nothing here.
He had visited Tyre and wasreporting back to Europe.
(24:21):
You see nothing here but a merebabble of broken walls, pillars
, vaults, there being not somuch as one unbroken house left.
A few years later, constantineValny passed through Tyre and
noted that the port was sosilted in that children could
wade from one ruined tower tothe other.
(24:44):
The population then numbered amere 50 or 60 families who lived
in poverty, subsisting on theproduce of their lands and by
fishing.
Close quote.
So Ezekiel 26 was literallyfulfilled.
You have to go back to thebeginning of the chapter,
remember.
He said I'm going to sendnation after nation, wave after
(25:05):
wave that will destroy you.
So yes, it took hundreds ofyears for it to happen, but God
said it was going to take manyyears for the nations to come.
The description there ofBabylon coming in Babylon was
the one that reduced it down tojust this island and then
Alexander came and took theisland and after that, yes,
(25:28):
there's a city there today, butit's not on the site of the old
one.
You can still see the ruins.
In fact, the ruins of the oldcity are the only tourist
attraction that small town canhave, which is to come in and
see the ruins of the old city.
We have it literally fulfilled.
Tyre had been a well-fortified,strong city and by the time of
(25:49):
the New Testament, in the firstcentury Acts 12.20, the people
of Tyre are begging theauthorities for food because the
king had cut off their foodsupply and they were going to
Jerusalem begging for food.
So we had this once mightynation with, think of it, linen
(26:09):
sails that were embroidered,made out of ivory in their
cities and so much gold that itwas literally dust in the
streets was.
By the time of the firstcentury, when the apostle was
there, they were begging forfood.
By the time of the Middle Ages,when the European explorers
(26:30):
came, it was literally a placefor the spreading of nets.
Steve, all this is very amazingbecause it was literally
fulfilled.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
What you're describing there, glenn, is that
the literal fulfillment wasthat Tyre as a city-state and an
influence, with all of itscolonies in the Mediterranean
area and its trade, werecompletely decimated and
completely taken away.
It was never, ever a force onits own.
(26:58):
And today, while the city maybe 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 reckonedwith or a nation of its own.
So that's how the literalfulfillment of this was taken
care of.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Oh, how amazing the Word of God is.
We can take it to the bankbecause what God promises will
come to be, and all theseprophecies were literally
fulfilled.
We'll stop today because oftime, but God is still dealing
with nations and we're going tosee that next time.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
On Reasoning Through the Bible, Thank you so much for
watching and listening and, asalways, may God bless you.
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