Ezekiel 26:4

Tyre means "a rock." This island city was built upon a rock… With its huge resources, Tyre could 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 every quarter served it. But God takes up its character in the end, and declares that it shall be a rock — a rock and nothing more — "a bare rock," or "cliff," as the word He uses means. The word for "bare" really means "dry" — dried by the sun.

Tyre is a merchant at heart; even his stated aim is to serve. No doubt his first aim is to serve himself. He does not have the true spirit of service for God. Instead he finds in the need of other people the chance for his own gain. This is the cause of his judgment here… She says against Jerusalem: "Aha, the gate of the peoples is broken; it has swung open to me. I shall be replenished, now that she is laid waste." How common such rejoicing is among merchants at all times! It hardly needs saying: making a habit of getting rich from other people's needs hardens the heart.

Proud of her position and 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 an empty dream. The many nations she has seen coming again and again to replenish her have now come up against her with the unstoppable force of the waves of the sea. They come to overtop 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. Her doom is to declare the name of the Lord — the name she has despised.

This great judgment was not carried out all at once. Nebuchadnezzar came against her first, as predicted in verses 7-11. He besieged Tyre on the mainland and took the city after thirteen years. The part of Tyre built on the island in the sea escaped, protected by the Tyrian fleet. Then came seventy years in which she was forgotten, as Isaiah predicted (23:15). After those years had passed Tyre saw a startling revival. The island city became more powerful and more wicked than before… The mainland Tyre, however, remained in ruins.

Alexander the Great came against the city built on the island. He took the city after seven months by building a causeway, which let his forces enter. In building this causeway, Alexander used the ruins of the old city. He laid the stones, the timber, and the very dust of the destroyed city into the sea to build the causeway that brought the utter ruin of the wealthy city.

Its present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches sheltering in the vaults and living mostly by fishing. Divine providence seems to keep them there, as a visible argument of how God has fulfilled His word about Tyre: that it should be "a bare rock… a place for the spreading of nets." To this hour everything has happened according to the word of the Lord God.

Ezekiel 26:2 shows that Tyre, the merchant city of the world, was the rival of Jerusalem, the city of God. So Babylon is the rival of the new Jerusalem. God was known in the palaces of Jerusalem; in Tyre, the god of this world. There the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and pride in possessions could be satisfied.