“Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god —
God sends Ezekiel with a message for the ruler of Tyre, the richest trading city of the ancient world. The charge is a heart so lifted up that the man calls himself a god — which raises the question, where does pride like that come from?
The Ruler and the City
The man addressed here was a real king of a real place. Commentators name him from ancient records. They also see him as more than one man.
William KellyIt seems that Ithobalus, as Josephus calls him — Ithbal the second in the Phoenician annals — ruled in the prophet's time. He may well have prompted this stirring and severe, yet magnificent, sketch. He stands as the representative prince of the world of that day... The prince was the head and centre and personification of that pride and wealth found in Tyre as a whole. No form of pride is lower, more blinding, or more corrupting.
His boast about sitting "in the heart of the seas" was not poetry. It described where he lived and what he had built.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe city of Tyre (the name means rock) stood partly on an island off the mainland in the Mediterranean Sea... It had a wonderful commerce... The prophet Isaiah describes this wealthy and influential city as "the bestower of crowns, whose merchants were princes, whose traders were the honored of the earth" (Isa. 23:8).
Riches That Lifted the Heart
This claim to be a god did not come from nowhere. It grew out of piled-up wealth — and it repeats the offer made in Eden.
F. W. GrantHere is a message to the prince of Tyre. In it we see what his heaped-up wealth, and the power that came with it, did to him: it lifted his heart to a place higher than human... Shocking as this is, it is still the natural outgrowth of what happened in the Garden of Eden. There the evil one's temptation was exactly this: "you will be like God."... It was a place seized, not given by God, and it leads on to seizing that grows still more open and extreme.
"Yet You Are but a Man"
God does not answer with words only. In verses 6–10 the judgment makes him feel in his own body that he is only a man.
William KellyIf he aspired to be God in pretence, he would feel what it is to be man in weakness. The sword of the dreaded foreigner would stain his brightness, and he would die the deaths of those killed in the heart of the seas. The sea would prove then to be no unbreakable shelter, but his most shameful grave.
The Power Behind the Throne
Ezekiel 28 speaks to two figures: a prince and a king. Writers keep the two apart.
J. N. DarbyIn Ezekiel 28 it is the prince and the king of Tyre that are judged for their pride. Verses 1–10 set before us the prince of this world's glory as a man. He exalts himself and tries to present himself as a god, having gained riches and glory by his wisdom. Verses 11–19 still speak of Tyre, but I think they go much farther. They disclose, though only dimly, the fall and the ways of Satan.
One writer explains why the prince and the king are kept apart:
The Bible TreasuryThe word to the prince of Tyre is what he has become in his pride after he is prince; to the king, what he was before he is king — before iniquity was found in him.
A Pattern Still to Come
The language of this verse does not stay in the past. Kelly notes that many of its phrases are borrowed for later predictions about the Antichrist, the man of sin still to come. Another writer describes that man:
J. G. BellettSatan's beauty shall be upon him, his power in him, his seat given to him, and his captives shall serve him... he will exalt himself above every god (Dan. 11:36), be like the Most High (Isa. 14:14), set his heart as the heart of God (Ezek. 28:6), and sit in the temple of God, as the apostle describes him, showing himself that he is God... And there is nothing that marks out this present day of ours more than this spirit in man which claims independence of God.
Pride, the Parent Sin
The verse names a sin that is not rare. One writer traces it back to angels as well as men.
C. KnappIt was pride, the really "original sin," that hideous parent-sin of all succeeding sins, whether among angels, or among men (1 Tim. 3:6; Ezek. 28:2, 17).
Summary
- Lifted heart. The charge begins in the heart, not the mouth. Wealth lifted his heart "to a place higher than human," and the boast only voiced what was already there.
- Seized seat. The claim repeats Eden's offer, "you will be like God" — a place seized, not given by God, and it grows bolder from there.
- Plain man. God's reply strips the pretence. He aimed to be God; he would "feel what it is to be man in weakness" in the hand of the man who kills him.
- Deeper shadow. God judges the prince as a man. From verse 11 the king dimly shows Satan's own fall — what he was before iniquity was found in him.
- Same spirit. Scripture borrows these words later for the man of sin. That same claim to independence from God marks our own day.