Ezekiel 26:3

Did Tyre say that Jerusalem was broken, "I shall be replenished now that she is laid waste"? The Lord Jehovah replies, "I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you." Her doom is pronounced. Her very dust will be scraped from her. Her daughters in the field — probably the colonies she planted — will be killed by the sword. So they would know that it was Jehovah.

In Tyre we find no direct enmity to Israel. Tyre is a merchant through and through; his stated aim is even to serve. No doubt his first aim is to serve himself. He has not the true spirit of service for God. Instead he finds in the need of man the opportunity for his own gain. This is what we find as the cause of his judgment here... The habit of gaining riches from the need of others hardens the heart, there is little need to say.

She is proud of her position. Counting on her many sources of strength, she can sit apart, hoping to profit from what she does not fear. But, as God tells her, it is only a vain dream. She has seen many nations coming again and again to replenish her. Now those same nations come up against her with the unstoppable force of the waves of the sea. They rise over her defences, destroy her walls, and break down her towers. She who has so often profited by the spoil of the nations shall in turn be a spoil for the nations.

Tyre means "a rock." This island city was built on a rock. For its particular purposes it did not need productive land where it stood. It needed a good meeting point where the goods of other places could come and be exchanged. Given the immensity of its resources, Tyre might well look on itself as a rock that could not be shaken. The greater the needs of others, the more the streams of supply from all quarters served it. But God takes up its character in the result, and declares that it shall be a rock — a rock and nothing more — "a bare rock."

God did not carry out this great judgment all at once. Nebuchadnezzar came against her first, as verses 7-11 predict. He besieged Tyre on the mainland and took the city after thirteen years. But the part of Tyre built on the island in the sea escaped, because Tyre's fleet protected it. Then came seventy years for her when she was forgotten, as Isaiah predicted (23:15). After these years passed, Tyre saw a startling revival. The island city became more powerful and more wicked than before.

The opposition that Tyre showed has carried on into modern times. The commerce so famous in that city has spread its wings over the cities of our day. They follow in Tyre's steps with the same unrighteousness, and they await the same doom... The spirit of Mammon rules the age. Under its influence men twist the truth. It becomes the profession of greedy men, who suppose that gain is godliness.