Ezekiel 26:21

I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

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

Compare Isaiah 14:9. The image used by Isaiah and Jeremiah of Babylon is by Ezekiel applied to Tyre, as if to show that Tyre and Babylon alike represent the world-power. So, in the Book of Revelation, Babylon is the kingdom of Antichrist.

The land of the living - The land of the true God, as opposed to the land of the dead, to which is gathered the glory of the world. Here then, together with the utter ruin of Tyre, rises the vision of renewed glory to Jerusalem. The coming Messiah is thus propheticly pointed out. The over-throw of God's enemies shall be accompanied by the establishment of His true kingdom.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21. terror—an example of judgment calculated to terrify all evildoers.

thou shall be no more—Not that there was to be no more a Tyre, but she was no more to be the Tyre that once was: her glory and name were to be no more. As, to Old Tyre, the prophecy was literally fulfilled, not a vestige of it being left.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

A terror, or consumption; I will utterly consume thee; with more than one kind of destruction will I destroy thee, and make thee thereby a terror to all that hear the bruit of thee.

Thou shalt be no more: see Ezekiel 26:14. If any will be so curious as to inquire, if they come to seek out the footsteps of this ancient Tyre, they shall lose their labour, no signs of it On the rock where once it stood. Rich, populous, potent, wise, renowned Tyre, as once thou wast, shalt never more be found; and, alas, that which is now on the continent is not fit to bear its name, much less to be counted the same city.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I will make thee a terror,.... To all the isles round about, who shall shake and tremble at the ruin of Tyre, as before observed; or to herself, being brought into a most terrible and distressed condition:

and thou shall be no more: in the same place and situation, in the same happy state and condition:

though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God: this is true of the antitype, Babylon, or antichrist, Revelation 18:21.

Geneva Study Bible

I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

21. make thee a terror] lit., terrors or destructions—I will utterly destroy thee, Ezekiel 27:36, Ezekiel 28:19; cf. Psalm 73:19. On “make” cf. Ezekiel 16:38.

The passage Ezekiel 29:17-21 states that Nebuchadnezzar received no adequate reward for the service against Tyre which he served for Jehovah. History records his thirteen years’ siege of Tyre, but is silent as to the issue of it. It is not known (1) whether he took the city, or (2) whether it capitulated, or (3) whether he retired from it. On the whole the second supposition may be most probable. At any rate neither the king nor his army received wages for his service. The prophecy was not literally fulfilled. Now

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 21. - I will make thee a terror. Ewald translates, "To sudden death will I bring thee," which corresponds with the margin of the Revised Version, I will make thee a destruction.



Ezekiel 26:21

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).