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The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God:
Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee:
With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures:
By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches:
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God;
Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.
They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.
Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.
Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.
All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.
Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Son of man, set thy face against Zidon, and prophesy against it,
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee: and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her.
For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am the LORD.
And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grieving thorn of all that are round about them, that despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
Thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell in their land that I have given to my servant Jacob.
And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them; and they shall know that I am the LORD their God.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

28:2 prince of Tyrus. The “prince of Tyrus” at the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy is believed to have been Ethbaal III. In any case, this monarch obviously must have been extremely proud and arrogant, even claiming to be God.


28:2 I am a God. It would seem insanity for any man to think he is God, except for the pantheistic context in which such assertions are made. Both ancient pagan religions and most modern ethnic religions, as well as the various New Age cults today, believe that the cosmos is its own creator and that men, as the highest products of its processes, are in union with the cosmic consciousness, “as gods” (Genesis 3:5). It is easy, then, for some great leader to go further and believe that he is the greatest of the gods.


28:3 Daniel. Daniel’s reputation was already widely known to his contemporaries, even as far away from Babylon as Tyre, yet the king of Tyre, being “god,” thought himself wiser than Daniel.


28:12 king of Tyrus. This new section of the prophecy is directed against “the king of Tyrus” rather than “the prince of Tyrus” (Ezekiel 28:2), and the whole tenor of the prophecy indicates that a different personage is in view. In fact, the description of this person could not be applied literally to any human being, no matter how rich or powerful or proud. Yet the one is obviously in some sense an extension of the description of the human “prince.”


28:13 Eden. No one was in Eden, the garden of God, except Adam and Eve, plus Satan. We are forced to conclude that this “king of Tyrus” is none other than Satan, personally possessing and controlling the willing body of the proud “prince of Tyrus.” Just as he possessed the body of the “king of Babylon” (see notes on Isaiah 14:12-15) and the body of Judas (Luke 22:3), he was able to possess and control the Tyrian monarch. His strategy in first personally taking control of an earlier king of Babylon and then the prince of Tyre, rather than leaving them to lower powers in the demonic hierarchy, probably had to do with the great military influence developing in Babylon and the preeminent economic influence of Phoenicia. By controlling the leaders of these two world powers, he could largely control the world, firmly establishing his anti-God materialistic, pantheistic, evolutionistic religious system almost everywhere. In this, he had largely succeeded.


28:13 precious stone. The description of this Eden, emphasizing precious stones, seems quite different from the tree-filled garden described in Genesis 2; probably the earthly Eden was prepared by God as a terrestrial model of His own Eden in heaven. When He finally was forced to expel Adam and Eve from the garden, He left the cherubims there to guard its entrance.


28:13 created. The mighty being addressed here was clearly of the angelic order, for he had been “created,” not born. This statement could not have been true of an earthly king of Tyre.


28:14 anointed cherub. The “anointed cherub” on God’s “holy mountain,” covering the heavenly Eden and God’s throne, was evidently the highest of the cherubim and, therefore, the highest of all God’s created angels.


28:15 perfect in thy ways. This being was of incomparable beauty and wisdom (Ezekiel 28:17), “perfect in all his ways,” causing his heart to be “lifted up” to attempt to displace His own Creator (see Isaiah 14:12-15).


28:15 iniquity. When iniquity was found in this perfect being—evidently the sin of rebellion against God—he who had been Lucifer (“Light-Bearer”) became Satan (“The Adversary”), and has remained God’s greatest foe ever since.


28:17 corrupted thy wisdom. Satan’s incomparable wisdom became corrupt when he deceived himself into thinking he could become God. He has attempted to deceive men and women ever since, persuading them (as he did Eve) that they also could be “as gods” (Genesis 3:5), but he had deceived himself most of all. His corrupted wisdom somehow persuaded him that he and God were the same type of being and, therefore, that he could displace God by leading a revolt of the angels under his command. This plan could be rationalized only by his assuming that both he and God had by some unknown process “evolved” out of the primeval waters which had been the environment of his first consciousness, when God created him. This is suggested not only from Genesis 1:2, but in all the most ancient pagan cosmogonies (Sumeria, Egypt, etc.), for which Satan must have been primarily responsible. Thus, Satan’s corrupted wisdom devised the primeval system of pantheistic evolutionism with which he has been corrupting and deceiving the world ever since.


28:17 to the ground. When he rebelled against God in the heavenly Eden (sometime after the six days of creation, for everything in heaven and earth was still “very good” at that point in time—Genesis 1:31–2:3), God “cast him to the ground”—that is, “to the earth”—where He allowed him to test Adam and Eve in their earthly Eden, to see whether they also would rebel against God’s Word, and seek to be gods themselves.


28:19 never shalt thou be. The final salvo in Ezekiel’s prophecy against the Satan-possessed king of Tyre returns in part to the coming demise of the arrogant earthly monarch. His calamitous defeat by the invading Babylonians would be a type of defeat that Satan himself would suffer in the ultimate day of the Lord.


28:21 Zidon. Tyre’s sister city in Phoenicia was also to be conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. Sidon, in fact, was older than Tyre (although Tyre had surpassed it in importance and wealth), for it had been founded by a son of Canaan himself (Genesis 10:15), and had been notoriously wicked through all the centuries since. It was not to be destroyed like Tyre, however, but would be subjected frequently to violence and pestilence (Ezekiel 28:23). It still survives today, but has been the scene of bloody fighting in almost endless wars and battles throughout the past 2500 years; that is still true today in Lebanon, where it is located in the modern world.


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