Ezekiel 28 explained: The King Who Called Himself a God

A king claims to be divine (vv. 1-5)

Tyre was a rich island trading city off the coast of today's Lebanon, and its ruler, made wealthy by trade, claimed to sit like a god on a throne out in the sea. The wise Daniel he is mockingly compared with may be the biblical Daniel or, as many scholars think, Danel, a wise hero of older Canaanite legend.

A very human death (vv. 6-10)

God says ruthless foreigners, most likely the Babylonians named in 26:7, will kill him and prove he is only mortal, and dying the death of the uncircumcised meant a shameful death among outsiders. Babylon did besiege Tyre for years, though Ezekiel himself admits in 29:18 that it gained little there.

A funeral song from Eden (vv. 11-15)

Ezekiel now sings a lament picturing the king as a dazzling being in God's garden, covered in jewels much like those on the chestpiece of Israel's high priest. Translations differ on verse 14: some make the king himself a guardian cherub (a winged heavenly guard), while others, following the ancient Greek version, place him beside one.

Pride brings him down (vv. 16-19)

His fall has concrete causes: his trade bred violence and dishonesty, and pride in his own beauty spoiled his wisdom. So he is driven from God's mountain and burned to ashes by a fire that comes out of him, a public ruin that appalls the nations.

Judgment on Sidon (vv. 20-24)

Sidon, an older port just north of Tyre, would suffer plague and killing in its streets, and the repeated line about people coming to know the LORD means these events would reveal who God is. Verse 24 pictures such neighbors as thorny briers, an old image for nations that had troubled Israel (Numbers 33:55).

Israel safe at home (vv. 25-26)

To exiles in Babylon, God promises a return to the land given to their ancestor Jacob, where they will build houses and plant vineyards in safety. Many see a first fulfillment in the return from exile decades later, while Jewish and Christian readers alike have also looked for a fuller one.

Key verse: Ezekiel 28:2

Where Christians differ

Christians differ over verses 11 to 19: many since the early church have read them as also describing Satan's fall from heaven, while most modern scholars and Jewish interpreters read them as poetic imagery about the human king, likening him to a glorious first being in Eden.

Something to think about

What do you think makes success and skill so likely to blur a person's sense of their own limits?