Ezekiel 27:12

From verse 12 we enter upon her foreign trade, beginning with Tarshish itself and ending with its ships in verse 25. In these early days Tarshish seems to have given its name to ships that sailed anywhere — at any rate, on long voyages. It worked much like our own term "East Indiamen."

Now we come to the commerce of Tyre and what it represents for us. We find Tarshish first and last in the list, and it appears to give its character to the whole.

A place ships sailed to from Palestine. Some think it refers to a Spanish city named Tartessus. That would be a fitting place to get silver, iron, tin, and lead. Jonah took a ship at Joppa to sail to Tarshish, which also points to a place west of Palestine. But other passages speak of apes and peacocks brought by ships of Tarshish, and these are linked with Ezion-geber, on the Gulf of Akaba, a branch of the Red Sea. So the ships from this port probably sailed south to some other place, which no one has identified.

It appears we need not doubt an original settlement on the south shore of Spain. The Phoenicians later had factories there too. From there their ships brought silver, iron, tin, and lead to Tyre, as Ezek. 27:12 tells us. The ships of Tarshish were the most famous for merchandise in ancient times.

He has, as we see here, silver, the money merchants use; and iron, the great material for making tools… Then he has tin, which literally means "alloy." However useful tin is for human ends, Scripture describes it as impurity — as much that seems very useful surely is. Last comes lead, which in Scripture stands for hardly anything but dross or weight. There is no gold in this catalogue… Here is the restless spirit of one adrift from God — a prodigal. How often are "the substantial gains of commerce," as they are called, only a prodigal wasting of the Father's goods!

Is it a mere catalogue? Is it only a record of where, as a matter of history, she found the goods she traded in, and of the goods themselves? Little else seems ever to have been made of it. But are we not warranted to seek for something more? The difficulties are certainly greater here than elsewhere. Many who shrink from allegory will doubtless brand any interpretation offered as far-fetched.

This city is the picture of the world's commercial glory — wealthy, corrupt, and self-confident… Tyre and the Tyrians formed the centre of trade in the ancient world. It was the marketplace for all the goods and luxuries of that day, and the link between west and east through "the ships of Tarshish."

Thorns and thistles the earth was to bring forth, and man to eat bread in the sweat of his brow. Satan would get around that sentence by gathering the different products of the earth and filling the eye and mind with them. He would try to hide the thorns by spreading a carpet of Tyrian merchandise over them.

Not that in itself it was sin; for we read that her merchandise in the coming day is to be used for the Lord (Isa. 23:17-18).