Ezekiel 27:1-8

A Lament for Tyre

27:1 The word of the Lord came to me: 27:2 “You, son of man, sing a lament for Tyre. ¹  27:3 Say to Tyre, who sits at the entrance ²  of the sea, ³  merchant to the peoples on many coasts, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says:

“‘O Tyre, you have said, “I am perfectly beautiful.”

27:4 ⁴ Your borders are in the heart of the seas;

your builders have perfected your beauty.

27:5 They crafted ⁵  all your planks out of fir trees from Senir; ⁶ 

they took a cedar from Lebanon to make your mast.

27:6 They made your oars from oaks of Bashan;

they made your deck ⁷  with cypresses ⁸  from the Kittean isles. ⁹ 

27:7 Fine linen from Egypt, woven with patterns, was used for your sail

to serve as your banner;

blue and purple from the coastlands of Elishah ¹⁰  was used for your deck’s awning.

27:8 The leaders ¹¹  of Sidon ¹²  and Arvad ¹³  were your rowers;

your skilled ¹⁴  men, O Tyre, were your captains.

[27:2]  ¹ tn Heb “lift up over Tyre a lament.”

[27:3]  ² tn Heb “entrances.” The plural noun may reflect the fact that Tyre had two main harbors.

[27:3]  ³ sn Rome, another economic power, is described in a similar way in Rev 17:1.

[27:4]  ⁴ tn The city of Tyre is described in the following account as a merchant ship.

[27:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “built.”

[27:5]  ⁶ tn Perhaps the hull or deck. The term is dual, so perhaps it refers to a double-decked ship.

[27:6]  ⁷ tn Or “hull.”

[27:6]  ⁸ tc The Hebrew reads “Your deck they made ivory, daughter of Assyria.” The syntactically difficult “ivory” is understood here as dittography and omitted, though some construe this to refer to ivory inlays. “Daughter of Assyria” is understood here as improper word division and the vowels repointed as “cypresses.”

[27:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “from the coastlands (or islands) of Kittim,” generally understood to be a reference to the island of Cyprus, where the Phoenicians had a trading colony on the southeast coast. Many modern English versions have “Cyprus” (CEV, TEV), “the coastlands of Cyprus” (NASB), “the coasts of Cyprus” (NIV, NRSV), or “the southern coasts of Cyprus” (NLT).

[27:7]  ¹⁰ sn This is probably a reference to Cyprus.

[27:8]  ¹¹ tc The MT reads “the residents of”; the LXX reads “your rulers who dwell in.” With no apparent reason for the LXX to add “the rulers” many suppose something has dropped out of the Hebrew text. While more than one may be possible, Allen’s proposal, positing a word meaning “elders,” is the most likely to explain the omission in the MT from a graphic standpoint and also provides a parallel to the beginning of v. 9. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:81.a parallel to v. 9.

[27:8]  ¹² map For location see Map1 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[27:8]  ¹³ sn Sidon and Arvad, like Tyre, were Phoenician coastal cities.

[27:8]  ¹⁴ tn Or “wise.”