Ezekiel 27:3-9

27:3 Say to Tyre, who sits at the entrance ¹  of the sea, ²  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 ³ Your borders are in the heart of the seas;

your builders have perfected your beauty.

27:5 They crafted ⁴  all your planks out of fir trees from Senir; ⁵ 

they took a cedar from Lebanon to make your mast.

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

they made your deck ⁶  with cypresses ⁷  from the Kittean isles. ⁸ 

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 ⁹  was used for your deck’s awning.

27:8 The leaders ¹⁰  of Sidon ¹¹  and Arvad ¹²  were your rowers;

your skilled ¹³  men, O Tyre, were your captains.

27:9 The elders of Gebal ¹⁴  and her skilled men were within you, mending cracks; ¹⁵ 

all the ships of the sea and their mariners were within you to trade for your merchandise. ¹⁶ 

[27:3]  ¹ tn Heb “entrances.” The plural noun may reflect the fact that Tyre had two main harbors.

[27:3]  ² sn Rome, another economic power, is described in a similar way in Rev 17:1.

[27:4]  ³ tn The city of Tyre is described in the following account as a merchant ship.

[27:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “built.”

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

[27:6]  ⁶ tn Or “hull.”

[27:6]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ sn This is probably a reference to Cyprus.

[27:8]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ map For location see Map1 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[27:8]  ¹² sn Sidon and Arvad, like Tyre, were Phoenician coastal cities.

[27:8]  ¹³ tn Or “wise.”

[27:9]  ¹⁴ sn Another Phoenician coastal city located between Sidon and Arvad.

[27:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “strengthening damages.” Here “to strengthen” means to repair. The word for “damages” occurs several times in 1 Kgs 12 about some type of damage to the temple, which may have referred to or included cracks. Since the context describes Tyre in its glory, we do not expect this reference to damages to be of significant scale, even if there are repairmen. This may refer to using pitch to seal the seams of the ship, which had to be done periodically and could be considered routine maintenance rather than repair of damage.

[27:9]  ¹⁶ sn The reference to “all the ships of the sea…within you” suggests that the metaphor is changing; previously Tyre had been described as a magnificent ship, but now the description shifts back to an actual city. The “ships of the sea” were within Tyre’s harbor. Verse 11 refers to “walls” and “towers” of the city.