Ezekiel 26:2

2. Tyrus Tyre was the chief city of Phoenicia, which was the leading naval power the Great Britain of the ancient world. It was but a small country, smaller even than Palestine, but its fame filled the whole earth. Phoenician credit and currency extended “from the coasts of Britain to those of Northwest India and probably to Madagascar… This trade tapped river basins as far apart as those of the Indus, the Euphrates, probably the Zambesi, the Nile, the Rhone, the Guadalquivir” (Smith, Isaiah, i, p. 390). In the eleventh century B.C. an Egyptian official was sent to Phoenicia for cedar wood (Pap. Golenischeff), as were Solomon’s agents one hundred years later. Tradition ascribes the invention of navigation to the Tyrians. Sennacherib (700 B.C.) boasts that he had builded at Nineveh, by Phoenician carpenters, “artful, great ships, according to their home manner,” and ordered as their sailors, prisoners of war, Tyrians, Sidonians, etc. It was during Ezekiel’s lifetime (600 B.C.) that a Phoenician sea captain circumnavigated Africa ( Herodotus, 4:42). For fifteen hundred years Phoenicia was the merchant of all nations. Her vast wealth made the mightiest kings of Egypt and Babylon look toward her as a possible prize, but because of her strategic position, unequaled navy, and shrewd diplomacy, she was enabled to maintain for many centuries her practical independence. In the fourteenth century B.C. Abimelki prostrates himself before the Pharaoh and calls Tyre the “handmaid of Egypt;” but the allegiance of Tyre to Egypt was entirely selfish and Egyptian power in Phoenicia was not great. Again and again in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. the Assyrian king boasts: “I marched up to the great sea of the West. I cleansed my weapons in the great sea. I put tribute upon Damascus, Tyre, Sidon,” etc. But the frequency of these campaigns indicates how superficial were the conquests. On a tablet from Sinjerli, Baal, king of Tyre, is represented as kneeling before Esarhaddon with a ring through his lips attached to a cord in the hands of the great king; but the inscriptions do not even name Tyre as a vassal state, and certainly the picture does not represent the ordinary relations of the king of Tyre with the king of Assyria ( McCurdy, ii, p. 345). Phoenicia did not depend for victory upon her soldiers, but upon her gold, and rather than have her commerce interrupted she could well afford to give tribute. She made, of course, political alliances with the states lying between her and her enemies. During the prosperous reigns of David and Solomon, Phoenicia was a warm friend to Israel; but after the division of the kingdom she lost interest in her weak neighbor and “sold” her to the Greeks or the Edomites as her own advantages dictated (Amos 1:9; Joel 3:6). Previous to Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.) the Assyrians seem to have been content with gifts from the chief cities of Phoenicia, but his successors urged campaign after campaign in the vain attempt to completely subjugate their small but doughty adversary. Nebuchadnezzar was determined to do this, but failed to get from Tyre the treasure that he had anticipated (see Ezekiel 29:18).

She is broken that was the gates of the people Literally, gate of the peoples. Jerusalem was the gateway opening from Egypt to Babylon and Phoenicia, and she had evidently been getting some of the trade of which Tyro wished the monopoly.

She is turned Rather, it. The gate of traffic now opens more freely toward Phoenicia since her rival is disposed of.