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Ezekiel 28: What the Passage Says

104 claims across 26 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 28 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Ezekiel three messages. The first is against the ruler of Tyre, who claimed to be a god because his wisdom and trade had made him rich; foreign armies will kill him, and he will die as a mere man. The second is a lament over the king of Tyre, described as once being in Eden and on God's holy mountain, blameless until wrongdoing was found in him, and now thrown down and burned to ashes. The third is against Sidon, and it closes with a promise that Israel will be gathered from the nations and live safely in the land given to Jacob.

Claim by Claim

  1. 28:1
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
    • The word of the LORD came with a message to be spoken.
  2. 28:2
    • The LORD told Ezekiel, addressed as son of man, to speak to the ruler of Tyre.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The Lord GOD said the ruler's heart is lifted up in pride.
    • The ruler said, 'I am a god.'
    • The ruler said he sits in the seat of God in the heart of the seas.
    • It is ambiguous whether the ruler claimed to be God or a god, and whether the seat is God's seat or the seat of gods.
    • The Lord GOD said the ruler is a man and not a god.
    • The Lord GOD said the ruler has regarded his own heart as the heart of God.
  3. 28:3
    • The Lord GOD said the ruler of Tyre is wiser than Daniel.
    • The Lord GOD said no secret can be hidden from the ruler of Tyre.
  4. 28:4
    • The ruler of Tyre gained wealth by his wisdom and his understanding.
    • The ruler of Tyre put gold and silver into his treasuries.
  5. 28:5
    • The ruler of Tyre increased his wealth by his great wisdom in trading.
    • The ruler of Tyre's heart became lifted up in pride because of his wealth.
  6. 28:6
    • The Lord GOD spoke again, introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The reason given is that the ruler of Tyre set his heart as the heart of God.
  7. 28:7
    • The LORD will bring strangers against the ruler of Tyre.
    • The strangers are the most ruthless of the nations.
    • The strangers will draw their swords against the beauty of the ruler's wisdom.
    • The strangers will defile the ruler's splendor.
  8. 28:8
    • The strangers will bring the ruler of Tyre down to the pit.
    • The ruler of Tyre will die the deaths of those who are slain.
    • The ruler of Tyre will die in the heart of the seas.
  9. 28:9
    • The LORD asked whether the ruler will still say 'I am God' before the one who slays him.
    • The ruler of Tyre will be a man and not God.
    • The ruler of Tyre will be in the hand of the one who slays him.
  10. 28:10
    • The ruler of Tyre will die the deaths of the uncircumcised.
    • The ruler of Tyre will die by the hand of strangers.
    • The LORD said he has spoken it.
    • The declaration is attributed to the Lord GOD.
  11. 28:11
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel again.
    • The word of the LORD came with a message to be spoken.
  12. 28:12
    • The LORD told Ezekiel, addressed as son of man, to take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre.
    • Ezekiel was told to speak to the king of Tyre.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The Lord GOD said the king of Tyre sealed up the sum, a phrase that may mean he was the seal of perfect proportion or the seal of completeness.
    • The Lord GOD said the king of Tyre was full of wisdom.
    • The Lord GOD said the king of Tyre was perfect in beauty.
  13. 28:13
    • The king of Tyre was in Eden, the garden of God.
    • Every precious stone was his covering.
    • The stones named are sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle.
    • Gold was included with the stones.
    • The workmanship of his settings, rendered as tabrets and pipes, was prepared in him.
    • The workmanship was prepared on the day he was created.
  14. 28:14
    • The king of Tyre is the anointed cherub that covers.
    • The LORD set him in that place.
    • The king of Tyre was upon the holy mountain of God.
    • The king of Tyre walked in the midst of the stones of fire.
  15. 28:15
    • The king of Tyre was perfect in his ways from the day he was created.
    • He remained perfect until iniquity was found in him.
  16. 28:16
    • By the multitude of the king of Tyre's merchandise the midst of him was filled with violence.
    • It is ambiguous whether others filled him with violence or he was filled with violence.
    • The king of Tyre sinned.
    • The LORD will cast him as profane out of the mountain of God.
    • The LORD will destroy him, addressing him as the covering cherub.
    • The LORD will remove him from the midst of the stones of fire.
  17. 28:17
    • The king of Tyre's heart was lifted up in pride because of his beauty.
    • The king of Tyre corrupted his wisdom because of his splendor.
    • The LORD will cast him to the ground.
    • The LORD will lay him before kings.
    • The LORD will do this so that kings may look upon him as a spectacle.
  18. 28:18
    • The king of Tyre defiled his sanctuaries.
    • He defiled them by the multitude of his iniquities.
    • He defiled them by the dishonesty of his trading.
    • The LORD will bring forth a fire from the midst of him.
    • The fire will devour him.
    • The LORD will bring him to ashes upon the earth.
    • This will happen in the sight of all who behold him.
  19. 28:19
    • All who know the king of Tyre among the peoples will be astonished at him.
    • The king of Tyre will become a terror.
    • The king of Tyre will never exist again.
  20. 28:20
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
    • The word of the LORD came with a message to be spoken.
  21. 28:21
    • The LORD told Ezekiel, addressed as son of man, to set his face against Sidon.
    • The LORD told Ezekiel to prophesy against Sidon.
  22. 28:22
    • Ezekiel was to declare the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The Lord GOD said he is against Sidon.
    • The LORD said he will be glorified in the midst of Sidon.
    • People will know that he is the LORD.
    • They will know this when he executes judgments in her.
    • The LORD will be shown holy in her.
  23. 28:23
    • The LORD will send pestilence into Sidon.
    • The LORD will send blood into her streets.
    • The slain will fall in the midst of her.
    • The sword will be against her on every side.
    • They will know that he is the LORD.
  24. 28:24
    • There will no longer be a pricking brier for the house of Israel.
    • There will no longer be a painful thorn for the house of Israel.
    • The briers and thorns are from all those around them.
    • Those around them treated Israel with contempt.
    • They will know that he is the Lord GOD.
  25. 28:25
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The LORD will gather the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they were scattered.
    • The LORD will be shown holy in them in the sight of the nations.
    • Then Israel will dwell in their own land.
    • The LORD gave that land to his servant Jacob.
  26. 28:26
    • They will dwell in the land safely.
    • They will build houses.
    • They will plant vineyards.
    • They will dwell in confidence.
    • This will happen when the LORD executes judgments upon all those around them who treat them with contempt.
    • They will know that he is the LORD their God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

28:1
"The LORD" in small capitals stands where the Hebrew has God's personal name, the four letters YHWH. Jewish readers said "the Lord" aloud instead of pronouncing it, and English Bibles keep that custom by printing LORD. Where the text reads "Lord GOD," the Hebrew has two words: "Lord" (master) followed by that same name.
28:2
"Son of man" is Hebrew for "human being," and it is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, a standing reminder of the gap between the speaker and the man being spoken to. Tyre was a Phoenician trading city on the coast of what is now Lebanon; its main fortress stood on an island half a mile offshore, which is why the ruler can claim to sit enthroned "in the middle of the sea." The word used for him here is a general term for a ruler or leader, not the ordinary word for king; verse 12 switches to "king."
28:3
The Daniel named here is spelled differently in Hebrew from the Daniel of the book of that name, and he is paired elsewhere in Ezekiel with Noah and Job as figures from the distant past. Ancient texts from Ugarit, north of Tyre, tell of a wise and just ruler called Danel, and many take that legendary figure to be the one a Phoenician king would be measured against. The line is sarcastic.
28:5
"Traffick" in 1611 English means trade and commerce and has nothing to do with cars. Tyre's money came from shipping, purple dye and merchant colonies spread around the Mediterranean.
28:7
"Foreigners" is a veiled way of naming the invading army. Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years in Ezekiel's own lifetime.
28:8
The Pit is another name for Sheol, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead going down, powerful and weak alike. It is not a place of punishment; it is simply the realm of the dead, the opposite of the high throne this king imagines for himself.
28:10
Circumcision marked membership in Israel and was also practiced by several neighboring peoples, so "the uncircumcised" meant outsiders, in Ezekiel's usage, the disgraced dead who are buried apart from the honored. To die "the death of the uncircumcised" is to die shamefully and be denied an honorable burial, not a comment on the king's own body.
28:12
A funeral song, or dirge, was a formal poem with its own limping rhythm, sung over a corpse. Prophets used the form to announce a death that had not yet happened: singing the funeral in advance treats the doom as already accomplished. "You were the very model of perfection" translates a Hebrew phrase whose sense is disputed: it may mean a signet seal of perfect design, or a perfectly measured pattern.
28:13
The nine stones listed overlap heavily with the gems on the high priest's breastpiece in Exodus, though the ancient Hebrew names cannot be matched with certainty to modern gems, which is why translations differ. The last clause is also uncertain: the Hebrew words may mean gold settings and mountings for those stones, or, as the King James took them, tambourines and pipes, musical instruments.
28:14
Cherubim in the ancient Near East were winged composite creatures, often part animal, that stood guard at temple doorways and flanked royal thrones; they are guardians, not the plump infants of later art. "Anointed" means marked out with oil, the ceremony used to install a king or a priest. God's "holy mountain" is the standard ancient picture of a divine dwelling, a summit where a god holds court. "The stones of fire" appears nowhere else and no one knows exactly what it means, glowing gems, blazing coals, or the fiery ground of the divine mountain have all been proposed.
28:16
"In disgrace" renders a word meaning common or unholy, the opposite of sacred. The figure is expelled the way something ritually unclean would be carried out of a sanctuary.
28:18
"Holy places" are the temples of Tyre; the city was known for its shrines, particularly to the god Melqart. The charge is that the king's own conduct in business polluted the sanctuaries he maintained.
28:19
"Thou shalt be a terror" means you will become a thing that horrifies people who look at you, an object of dread, not a power that terrorizes others.
28:21
Sidon was the other great Phoenician port, about twenty-five miles up the coast from Tyre, and the two cities are named together throughout the Bible. "Turn toward", literally "set your face against", is a gesture of formal confrontation, the prophet physically facing his target as he delivers the words.
28:22
"Then they will know that I am the LORD" is Ezekiel's signature refrain, occurring some seventy times in the book and closing most of its oracles. To "show that I am holy" translates a verb meaning to be treated as set apart and untouchable; the point is public demonstration, in view of onlookers.
28:23
"Pestilence" is a deadly disease that races through a crowded city, what we would call a plague.
28:24
Briers and thorns as a figure for hostile neighbors goes back to Numbers 33:55, where Israel is warned that peoples left in the land will become "pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides." Ezekiel is picking up a stock phrase his hearers would recognize.
28:25
Ezekiel is speaking to Judeans deported to Babylon after Jerusalem fell, so "gather back from the nations where they were scattered" describes a reversal of the exile his audience was living through. Jacob, also called Israel, was the ancestor whose twelve sons gave their names to the twelve tribes; naming him signals the land grant made to the family long before.
28:26
Building a house and planting a vineyard were the standard shorthand for security, because both take years to pay off, a vineyard yields no usable harvest for several seasons. Only people who expect to be left alone start either one.

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