Ezekiel 27
The sinking of Tyre
Funeral song before the death of Tyre
1The LORD gave me this message:2Human, I want you to sing a song about Tyre—a funeral song. 3Introduce it this way. Tell the people of Tyre, those merchants who sell to folks along the coast of many countries, that the Lord God wrote this song for them.
Dear Tyre, I quote you now,
“I couldn’t be more beautiful.”
4Shipwrights conceived you as the perfect ship [1]
Taking control of the western sea.
5They built you as a double-decker, [2]
Each deck made of juniper from Senir. [3]
They built your mast
From a cedar tree in Lebanon.
6They made your oars
From oaks of Bashan. [4]
And they shaped your hull
From cypress of Cyprus,
Styled with inlaid ivory.
7They raised an embroidered sail
Of fine Egyptian linen.
And they made your cabin cover
From a blue and purple banner
Dipped in dye of Elishah’s [5] coast.
8Nobles of Sidon [6] and Arvad
Powered the ship as rowers.
Your own senior leaders of Tyre
Piloted the ship.
9Seasoned sailors from Byblos [7]
Handled maintenance and repair.
Sailors from all the ships at sea
Did business in your harbor.
10Soldiers from Persia, Turkey, and Libya [8]
Served in your military.
They decorated your timber
With shields and helmets,
Adding a sense of kingly style
11You brought in guards
From Arvad and Cilicia.
Lookouts from Gamad [9]
Were stationed in the towers.
They hung their weapons on your walls,
Adding even more style to the décor.
Tyre’s business model
12Tarshish in Spain [10] served as your broker. They traded your products for what you wanted: silver, iron, tin, and lead.13Greece and Turkey [11] served as your brokers, trading your products for slaves and copper or bronze.
14Beth-togarmah [12] traded your products for war horses, work horses, and mules.
15Merchants from Rhodes [13] traded directly with you. You had coastal trading centers like that throughout the seacoast. They paid you in ivory and the rare black wood known as ebony.
16Syria served as your broker, since you had a lot of what they wanted. They traded your products for turquoise, purple cloth, embroidered cloth, fine linen, coral, and rubies.
17Israel and Judah traded their wheat from Minnith, along with their honey, olive oil, and balm cream.
18Damascus traded on your behalf. They traded your products for wine from Helbon, [14] and wool of Zahar, 19and wine casks from Uzal. They also brought you wrought iron, cassia spice, [15] and sweet cane.
20Dedan [16] traded their saddle blankets and riding gear for your products.
21Arabian herders and rulers of the Kedar [17] tribe traded their lambs, sheep, and goats for what you had to offer.
22Merchants in Sheba [18] and Raamah [19] traded a wide variety of spices, jewels, and gold.
23People of Haran, [20] Canneh, Eden, Asshur, Chilmad, and others from Sheba traded with you, too. 24They specialized in fabric. They brought you the finest clothing, embroidered and dyed blue. They also brought colorful carpets tied with ropes. [21]
25Ships from Tarshish, loaded heavy with your products, did business for you throughout the Mediterranean world.
Tyre’s ship goes down, all is lost
26But look where your rowers took you.Far into the open sea.
An eastern storm blew in
And blew you to pieces.
27You lost it all to the depths of the sea:
Sailors, pilots, repair crews, brokers, warriors,
And all the wealth invested in your products.
28Cries of the drowning sailors
Echoed across the sea and to the land.
29Back in port,
All sailors step off their ships,
From oarsmen to pilots.
They stand on the shoreline
30And mourn your death.
They cry loud, bitter wails,
Throwing dust on themselves
And rolling in cold ashes.
31They cut off their hair.
They dressed in clothes made of burlap feed sacks.
Bitter cries poured out of their souls.
32Their wailing became your funeral song:
“No one has ever died as horribly as Tyre,
Drowned in the open sea.
33You sailed the seas with your products,
Keeping your customers happy.
With all you had to offer in riches and products,
You made a lot of kings richer than ever.
34Now you’re sunk,
Lost at sea with everything—
Your people and your products.
35All the people along the coast are horrified.
Their kings are terrified.
You can see it in their twisting faces.
36Your fellow merchants shake their heads and moan.
Such a waste, a terrible way to go:
Sunk and gone, lost forever.”
Footnotes
Lyrics of this song present Lebanon’s port city of Tyre as a marvelous ship doomed to disaster.
A double decker ship is a ship with two full decks, one on top of the other. The space in between was commonly used as the cargo hold.
Senir was the Amorite name for Mount Hermon, on the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel (Deuteronomy 3:9).
Bashan was a territory east of the Sea of Galilee. Early on, Israelites conquered that land and gave much of it to half the tribe of Manasseh. They liked the land because it provided good grazing for their livestock.
Location of Elishah’s coast is unknown. Purple was an expensive color because purple die came from the murex snail in the Mediterranean Sea. Jews weren’t seafaring people. They were dryland “sea-fearing” herders and farmers. It’s likely they had to import the dye from others who worked in the shallow coastal waters of the Mediterranean Sea, such as Phoenicians in what is now Lebanon.
Sidon and Arvad are cities that represented Tyre’s leaders in this allegory, a symbolic story. Sidon is about 21 miles (35 km) north of Tyre. The island city of Arvad is roughly 115 miles (185 km) north and less than 2 miles (3 km) offshore.
The coastal town of Byblos was about 65 miles (105 km) up the coast of Lebanon, and a day’s walk north of Beirut (about 20 miles or 32 km).
These are educated guesses, a step up from “guesses.” In the original Hebrew, the names are Paras, Lud, and Put. Paras is the longshot, as “Persia.” That’s because Ezekiel lived before Persia’s rise to power. But Paras is the common Hebrew spelling for Persia. Lud is typically translated as “Lydia,” a province in what is now Turkey. Put is commonly linked to Libya.
Gamad shows up in the Bible only here. Location is unknown. Some scholars say they can’t tell if it’s a place or something else.
“Spain” seems the most common guess about where to find Tarshish. Location of Tarshish is uncertain. But wherever it was, it was west of the Jewish homeland of Israel. Scholars often guess that it was a city in Spain or somewhere else at the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea from the Jewish homeland. Some say it was a Phoenician colony called Tartessus, in Spain. Phoenicians were native to what is now Lebanon, but their merchant ships sailed through the Mediterranean Sea.
More specifically Javan for Greece and Tubal and Meshach, territories in what are now Turkey.
Beth-togarmah was in central Turkey, many scholars speculate. Some link it to the town of Gurun.
Rhodes was a port city in Turkey, about 470 miles (750 km) northwest of Tyre.
Helbon was a town about 10 miles (16 km) north of Damascus. Location of the other cities associated with Damascus is uncertain.
Cassia was a fragrant spice used in anointing oil and to sweeten the smell of clothing in a hot and dry ancient land without deodorant.
Dedan was an oasis town in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Dedan, now the city of Al Ula, is in the Saudi Arabian desert boonies, where the sand meets the rock foothills east of the Red Sea. As the raven flies, it’s close to 400 miles (over 600 km) southeast of Jerusalem. It was an important stop for merchants traveling through the desert to take products like frankincense and spices to trading centers. named after Esau’s grandson. One of Job’s visitors came from there (Job 2:11).
Kedar is the name of a tribe of nomads from the deserts of what are now Syria and Saudi Arabia.
No one seems to know where the land of Sheba was. A popular guess is Yemen, in southern Arabia, parked at the corner of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Another common guess is across the Red Sea, somewhere on the Horn of Africa, in Somalia, Ethiopia, or another neighboring nation.
In the Bible, Raamah is always mentioned with Sheba. But the location is unknown.
Haran is a city in what is now southern Turkey, near the northern border of Syria. Abraham lived there before moving to what became Israel. Location of Canneh, Eden, Asshur, Chilmad is unknown.
It’s a guess that the ropes were used to tie up the carpet. It’s impossible to tell from the phrasing in the original Hebrew text if the ropes were used to tie up the carpet or if they were a separate product. Either way, it seems Tyre got some good rope.
Discussion Questions
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