Eze 26:15-18 | JFB | STEP | 15-21. The impression which the overthrow of Tyre produced on other maritime nations and upon her own colonies, for example, Utica, Carthage, and Tartessus or Tarshish in Spain. isles —maritime lands. Even mighty Carthage used to send a yearly offering to the temple of Hercules at Tyre: and the mother city gave high priests to her colonies. Hence the consternation at her fall felt in the widely scattered dependencies with which she was so closely connected by the ties of religion, as well as commercial intercourse. shake

Ezekiel 26:15-18

15-21. The impression which the overthrow of Tyre produced on other maritime nations and upon her own colonies, for example, Utica, Carthage, and Tartessus or Tarshish in Spain.

isles—maritime lands. Even mighty Carthage used to send a yearly offering to the temple of Hercules at Tyre: and the mother city gave high priests to her colonies. Hence the consternation at her fall felt in the widely scattered dependencies with which she was so closely connected by the ties of religion, as well as commercial intercourse.

shake—metaphorically: "be agitated" (Jer 49:21).

16. come down from their thrones . . . upon the ground—"the throne of the mourners" (Job 2:13; Jon 3:6).

princes of the sea—are the merchant rulers of Carthage and other colonies of Tyre, who had made themselves rich and powerful by trading on the sea (Isa 23:8).

clothe . . . with trembling—Hebrew, "tremblings." Compare Eze 7:27, "clothed with desolation"; Ps 132:18. In a public calamity the garment was changed for a mourning garb.

17. inhabited of seafaring men—that is, which was frequented by merchants of various sea-bordering lands [GROTIUS]. FAIRBAIRN translates with Peschito, "Thou inhabitant of the seas" (the Hebrew literal meaning). Tyre rose as it were out of the seas as if she got thence her inhabitants, being peopled so closely down to the waters. So Venice was called "the bride of the sea."

strong in the sea—through her insular position.

cause their terror to be on all that haunt it—namely, the sea. The Hebrew is rather, "they put their terror upon all her (the city's) inhabitants," that is, they make the name of every Tyrian to be feared [FAIRBAIRN].

18. thy departure— Isa 23:6, 12 predicts that the Tyrians, in consequence of the siege, should pass over the Mediterranean to the lands bordering on it ("Chittim," "Tarshish," &c.). So Ezekiel here. Accordingly JEROME says that he read in Assyrian histories that, "when the Tyrians saw no hope of escaping, they fled to Carthage or some islands of the Ionian and Ægean Seas" [BISHOP NEWTON]. (See on Eze 29:18). GROTIUS explains "departure," that is, "in the day when hostages shall be carried away from thee to Babylon." The parallelism to "thy fall" makes me think "departure" must mean "thy end" in general, but with an included allusion to the "departure" of most of her people to her colonies at the fall of the city.