Ezekiel 26:19

For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(19) Bring up the deep upon thee.—With Ezekiel 26:19 begins the closing section of this prophecy, and in it the other parts are summed up and emphasised. The figurative language by which the overwhelming of Tyre is here described is again appropriate to her natural situation.

Benson Commentary

Ezekiel 26:19-21. Thus saith the Lord, When I shall make thee a desolate city — When I shall fulfil these predictions, and make thee what I now threaten to make thee; like the cities that are not inhabited — Whose walls are broken down, and whose streets are all solitary. When I shall bring up the deep upon thee — This may be understood either figuratively of Nebuchadnezzar’s army, or literally of the sea overflowing and covering a great part of the ancient seat of the city, in consequence of the walls and outworks thereof being demolished. And great waters shall cover thee — Either, literally, the waters of the sea, or, metaphorically, great afflictions. When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit — When thou shalt be brought to utter desolation, like the cities which have been long buried in ruin and oblivion. The phrase of going down into the pit, (by which term is often signified the grave,) is frequently made use of in Scripture, to express the destruction of a person or place. Thus our Saviour says of Capernaum, (Luke 10:15,) Thou shall be thrust down to hell, or, rather, as it ought to be translated, into the state of the dead, that is, thou shall become desolate, or be no longer a city. With the people of old time — With those who are now in entire oblivion, as those who lived in the first ages of the world now are. And shall set thee in the low parts of the earth — Another description of the grave, from the situation and solitude of it; in places desolate of old — Desolate from the beginning. And I shall set glory in the land of the living — That is, when I shall reinstate Judea in glory again. Judea is called the land of the living, (which signifies, according to the genius of the Hebrew language, the land of happy men,) because that the inhabitants were assured of all blessings so long as they served God faithfully. The prophet here foretels that the city of Jerusalem, at whose destruction the inhabitants of Tyre had so greatly exulted, should be again rebuilt in the same place, and even attain to a height of reputation and glory, while the city of Tyre should remain a desolation. I will make thee a terror, and thou shall be no more — Thou shall be left in the ruins of desolation, a terrible example of my vengeance. Though thou be sought for, yet shall thou never be found again — A mode of expression this, which denotes an entire destruction: see notes on Ezekiel 26:4-5; Ezekiel 26:14.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

26:15-21 See how high, how great Tyre had been. See how low Tyre is made. The fall of others should awaken us out of security. Every discovery of the fulfilment of a Scripture prophecy, is like a miracle to confirm our faith. All that is earthly is vanity and vexation. Those who now have the most established prosperity, will soon be out of sight and forgotten.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Of seafaring men - literally, "from the seas," i. e., occupied by men who come from the seas. Tyre was an inhabited city rising from out of the sea.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

19. great waters—appropriate metaphor of the Babylonian hosts, which literally, by breaking down insular Tyre's ramparts, caused the sea to "cover" part of her.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Shall make thee a desolate city; have made thee what now I threaten I will make thee.

Like the cities that are not inhabited; in the same state with cities that have not any to dwell in them, whose walls are broken down. and into whose streets all solitary wild beasts may come at pleasure.

The deep; figuratively, Nebuchadnezzar’s army; literally, when thy walls and ramparts are so broken down by the Chaldeans, that the Sea, at high tides, and in stormy swelling seas, overflows part of thine ancient seat.

Great waters; either literally, as the deep coming up; or metaphorically, great afflictions shall flow over thee.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For thus saith the Lord God,.... Both to the terror of Tyre, and for the comfort of his people:

when I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; whose trade is ruined, whose inhabitants are destroyed, and whose walls are broken down, and become a mere waste and desert; where no person or anything of value are to be seen:

when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and the great waters shall cover thee: the waters of the sea shall rush in and overflow the city, the walls of it being broken down; just as the old world, and the cities of it, were overflowed with the deluge, to which the allusion may be; whether this was literally accomplished on Tyre is not certain; perhaps it is to be taken in a figurative sense, and to be understood of the large army of the Chaldeans that should come up against it, and overpower it. So the Targum,

"when I shall bring up against them an army of people, who are many as the waters of the deep, and many people shall cover thee; see Revelation 17:15.''

Geneva Study Bible

For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

19. Tyre shall be overwhelmed in the great waters, and brought down to the pit, with them dead from of old; she shall never, be inhabited nor found any more.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19. - When I shall bring up the sea. The picture of desolation is completed. The sea washes over the bare rock that was once covered with the palaces of the merchant-princes. Ezekiel 26:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Thus will Tyre, covered by the waves of the sea, sink into the region of the dead, and vanish for ever from the earth. - Ezekiel 26:19. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, When I make thee a desolate city, like the cities which are no longer inhabited, when I cause the deep to rise over thee, so that the many waters cover thee, Ezekiel 26:20. I cast thee down to those who have gone into the grave, to the people of olden time, and cause thee to dwell in the land of the lower regions, in the ruins from the olden time, with those who have gone into the grave, that thou mayest be no longer inhabited, and I create that which is glorious in the land of the living. Ezekiel 26:21. I make thee a terror, and thou art no more; they will seek thee, and find thee no more for ever, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - Not only will ruin and desolation come upon Tyre, but it will sink for ever into the region of the dead. In this concluding thought the whole threat is summed up. The infinitive clauses of Ezekiel 26:19 recapitulate the leading thoughts of the previous strophes, for the purpose of appending the closing thought of banishment to the under-world. By the rising of the deep we are to understand, according to Ezekiel 26:12, that the city in its ruins will be sunk into the depths of the sea. יורדי , those who go down into the pit or grave, are the dead. They are described still further as עם עולם, not "those who are sleeping the long sleep of death," or the generation of old whom all must join; but the people of the "old world" before the flood (2 Peter 2:5), who were buried by the waters of the flood, in accordance with Job 22:15, where עולם denotes the generations of the primeval world, and after the analogy of the use of עם עולם in Isaiah 44:7, to describe the human race as existing from time immemorial.

In harmony with this, חרבות are the ruins of the primeval world which perished in the flood. As עם עולם adds emphasis to the idea of יורדי בור, so also does בּחרבות מעולם to that of ארץ תּחתּיּות. Tyre shall not only descend to the dead in Sheol, but be thrust down to the people of the dead, who were sunk into the depths of the earth by the waters of the flood, and shall there receive its everlasting dwelling-place among the ruins of the primeval world which was destroyed by the flood, beside that godless race of the olden time. ארץ תּחתּיּות, land of the lowest places (cf. Ezekiel 32:18, Ezekiel 32:24), is a periphrasis for Sheol, the region of the dead (compare Ephesians 4:9, "the lower parts of the earth"). On 'ונתתּי צבי וגו Hitzig has observed with perfect correctness: "If we retain the pointing as the first person, with which the place assigned to the Athnach (-) coincides, we must at any rate not regard the clause as still dependent upon למען, and the force of the לא as continued. We should then have to take the clause as independent and affirmative, as the accentuators and the Targum have done." But as this would give rise to a discrepancy between the two halves of the verse, Hitzig proposes to alter נתתּי retla ot seso into the second person ונתּתי, so that the clause would still be governed by למען לא. But the want of agreement between the two halves of the verse does not warrant an alteration of the text, especially if it lead to nothing better than the forced rendering adopted by Hitzig, "and thou no longer shinest with glory in the land of the living," which there is nothing in the language to justify. And even the explanation proposed by Hvernick and Kliefoth, "that I no longer produce anything glorious from thee (Tyre) in the land of the living," is open to this objection, that "from thee" is arbitrarily interpolated into the text; and if this were what Ezekiel meant, he would either have added לך or written נתתּיך. Moreover, the change of the person is a sufficient objection to our taking נתתּי as dependent upon למען, and supplying לא. ונתתּי is evidently a simple continuation of והושׁבתּיך. And nothing but the weightiest objections should lead us to give up a view which so naturally suggests itself. But no such objections exist. Neither the want of harmony between the two halves of the verse, nor the context, - according to which Tyre and its destruction are referred to both before and immediately after, - forces us to the adoption of explanations at variance with the simple meaning of the words. We therefore adhere to the natural interpretation of the words, "and I set (establish) glory in the land of the living;" and understand by the land of the living, not the theocracy especially, but the earth, in contrast to the region of the dead. The words contain the general thought, that on and after the overthrow of the glory of the ungodly power of the world, He will create that which is glorious on the earth to endure for ever; and this He really does by the establishing of His kingdom. - Tyre, on the contrary, shall become, through its fate, an object of terror, or an example of sudden destruction, and pass away with all its glory, not leaving a trace behind. For Ezekiel 26:21, compare Isaiah 41:12 and Psalm 37:36. וּתבקשׁי, imperf. Pual, has Chateph-patach between the two u, to indicate emphatically that the syllable is only a very loosely closed one (vid., Ewald, 31b, p. 95).