Ezekiel 26:3

     3, 4. nations . . . as the sea . . . waves—In striking contrast to the boasting of Tyre, God threatens to bring against her Babylon's army levied from "many nations," even as the Mediterranean waves that dashed against her rock-founded city on all sides.

      scrape her dust . . . make her . . . top of . . . rock—or, "a bare rock" [GROTIUS]. The soil which the Tyrians had brought together upon the rock on which they built their city, I will scrape so clean away as to leave no dust, but only the bare rock as it was. An awful contrast to her expectation of filling herself with all the wealth of the East now that Jerusalem has fallen.

Ezekiel 26:5

     5. in the midst of the sea—plainly referring to New Tyre (Eze 27:32).

Ezekiel 27:4

     4. Tyre, in consonance with her seagirt position, separated by a strait of half a mile from the mainland, is described as a ship built of the best material, and manned with the best mariners and skilful pilots, but at last wrecked in tempestuous seas (Eze 27:26).

Ezekiel 27:25-26

     25. sing of thee—personification; thy great merchant ships were palpable proofs of thy greatness. Others translate from a different Hebrew root, "were thy (mercantile) travellers." FAIRBAIRN translates, "Were thy walls." But the parallelism to "thou wast glorious" favors English Version, "sing of thee."

     26. In contrast to her previous greatness, her downfall is here, by a sudden transition, depicted under the image of a vessel foundering at sea.

      east wind—blowing from Lebanon, the most violent wind in the Mediterranean (Ps 48:7). A Levanter, as it is called. Nebuchadnezzar is meant. The "sea" is the war with him which the "rowers," or rulers of the state vessel, had "brought" it into, to its ruin.

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