Commentary on Ezekiel 28.1–28.24

“And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: And you, son of man, say to the ruler of Tyre: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Because your heart was lifted up, and you said, ‘I am God; I have dwelt in the dwelling of God in the heart of the sea’; yet you are a man and not God, and you have set your heart as the heart of God.” All the kinds of sin are loathsome, but the most loathsome of all is pride: “For everything lofty,” it says, “is an abomination before the Lord”; and, “The Lord opposes the proud”; and the divine Apostle: “Not a new convert,” he says, “lest, puffed up, he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” This disease the ruler of Tyre also had, both the visible one and the invisible one. For we, the pious, are ruled properly and truly by the God of the universe; but we are ruled also by men adorned with piety. So Tyre too now, like us, has God as king and the men appointed by him to reign. But of old, sick with ignorance of God and enslaved to impiety, it had as ruler and king the devil, the inventor and at the same time the teacher of wickedness and impiety; and it also had a visible ruler, the one wickedly worked upon by him and enslaved to ungodliness. The word, then, is addressed to both; yet not everything fits either this one or that one: some things fit both, some only one of the two; and what has now been read fits each. For the devil ran aground on that madness, and in his frenzy called himself god, and persuaded men to offer him this worship; and the visible ruler of the Tyrians, sick with this same conceit and looking at his great prosperity, supposed that he was God. Therefore God says to him: “But you are a man and not God.” And by comparison: “Are you wiser than Daniel? The wise did not instruct you with their understanding.” So far, he says, do your affairs fall short of being compared with the divine nature that I will show them falling short even of wise men. For Daniel both had the divine wisdom and acquired besides the learning of the Chaldeans; but you have been deprived of the divine grace and have not acquired learning from wise men either. Then the proof from the facts: “Was it by your understanding or by your prudence that you made power for yourself, and acquired silver and gold in your treasuries? Or by your great understanding and your trade did you multiply your power, and was your heart lifted up in your power?” Learn, he says, from the facts themselves that you had this trade and the abundance of goods not from your wisdom but from my provision. For if I so wish, I will at once strip you of all these things, and set experience over you as your teacher of the facts. For if you had this possession from your own wisdom, use that same wisdom and you will not be stripped of what you acquired; but when you are stripped and left destitute of all these things, throw away your foolish reasonings, and know that it was I who both gave you these things and took them back. For since you did not know me when you received, you will learn me when you are stripped. “Therefore thus says Adonai the Lord: Since you set your heart as the heart of God, therefore behold, I am bringing upon you … their swords upon you and upon the beauty of your understanding, and they will spread your beauty to destruction. And they will bring you down, and you will die the death of the slain in the heart of the sea. Will you indeed say, ‘I am God,’ before those who slay you? But you are a man and not God, in the hand of those who wound you. You will die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hands of foreigners; for I have spoken, says Adonai the Lord.” When, he says, the enemies sent by me against you strip you of your royal authority, and … and boasting, will you again name yourself God, as if frightening them with the divine title? But this cannot be; for the change in your circumstances will also work a change in your thinking, and you will learn that you are a man and not God, as you are wounded and slain and … For my sentence is strong and not to be gainsaid; this is what “For I have spoken, says Adonai the Lord” signified. These things also fit the avenging demon who worked wickedness in the visible ruler of the Tyrians; therefore he also threatens him with destruction from foreigners and plagues and nations. Such of old were those who through the preaching of the gospel received the change to the knowledge of God. Therefore the divine Apostle says: “For we too were once … and various pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” And God himself says through the great Moses: “They,” he says, “made me jealous with what is no god; they provoked me with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation; with a foolish nation I will provoke them.” Through these, then, who were of old foolish and senseless and astray and hateful, “plagues” and “foreigners” and gentiles, the prophetic word foretells the overthrow of the devil. And one can find the name “foreigners” applied also to the pious who have believed: “For you,” he says, “who once were far off have been brought near.” These, he says, with their own swords will destroy the beauty of the devil's understanding and make it vanish; that is, they will undo your devices and put a stop to your plots against men, tear up from their foundations the precincts built for you by them, and hand you over, as to a kind of death, to oblivion, having received authority “to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all your power.” And by the facts themselves you will learn that in vain you persuaded men that you are God. And you will suffer this because you had an uncircumcised mind, and did not circumcise the harshness of your boasting. “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the ruler of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says Adonai the Lord: You are a seal of likeness, full of wisdom and a crown of beauty. In the delight of the paradise of God you were; you have been bound with every precious stone: sardius and topaz and emerald and jacinth and carbuncle and sapphire and jasper and silver and gold and ligure and agate and … and with gold you filled your treasuries and your storehouses in you, from the day you were created.” One might, by forcing them, apply these things also to the visible ruler of Tyre; but properly and truly they fit the wicked demon who worked in him. Taking them, then, of the visible ruler of Tyre, we shall understand them thus. “You are a seal of likeness”: for man was formed according to the divine image; “full of wisdom”: for he is rational and honoured with reason; “and a crown of beauty”: for he is superior to all the irrational creatures, those that walk and those that fly, those in the water and those that live in both. “And you were in the delight of the paradise of God”: for you trace your descent from the forefather, who as soon as he was formed was placed in the paradise of delight, to work it and to guard it. And fittingly he also calls Jerusalem, which is named the holy and divine city, a paradise, since it has the plants of God's prophecy and high priesthood, which bestow life and salvation. Of old there was friendship between the king of the Tyrians and the king of the Israelites, and they had some dealings with each other; this is easy to learn from the Kingdoms. The words “You have been bound with every precious stone” are clear when understood according to the letter and taken of a king: I adorned you, he says, with countless good things, and brought you materials of every kind from everywhere; and when you had made from them diadems and crowns, brooches and belts and rings, and had filled your storerooms, you went on thinking the opposite, [priding yourself] on their … and comeliness. But we shall not understand these things in this way of the devil; rather we shall take “You are a seal of likeness” of the rule and authority given him of old. For the divine Apostle says: “According to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience.” So it is clear that of old he had been entrusted with the administration of this air, but having fallen from his command through arrogance, he displays his own working in those who do not believe the word of the preaching. “Full of wisdom and a crown of beauty, and you were in the delight of paradise”: by these he hints at his former virtue. “For God saw,” it says, “all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” And this one too was one of the things made, not yet having undergone the change, by his own choice, to the worse. By the stones named he signifies his manifold wisdom and knowledge. For the high priest too, wearing upon his breast the oracle of judgment, on which these very stones were set, entered the holy of holies; and the breast is, as it were, a storehouse and safeguard of the heart. And all that follows fits not the visible ruler of Tyre but the invisible one.

“For you were fashioned,” he says, “with the cherub, anointed by God, the one who overshadows.” For together with those holy and venerable powers you were counted worthy both of creation and of anointing; and here he calls anointing the sanctification supplied by the divine Spirit to the bodiless and holy powers. “And I set you on the holy mountain of God; you were in the midst of fiery stones.” He calls the height of knowledge the holy mountain of God, and the most holy powers fiery stones; for they have both preciousness and a luminous nature. Divine Scripture often knows how to call even pious men holy stones: “For holy stones,” it says, “roll upon the earth.” But these are holy, not fiery. About the powers above let us hear the divine David, who says: “He who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” None of this fits the visible ruler of the Tyrians, even if some contentious people should insist ten thousand times that the fiery stones are the Jews, and the dealings of the Tyrians with them; for the Jews are not fiery stones. And even if someone should name the prophets among them fiery stones, not even so will the interpretation stand; for the Tyrians had no fellowship with the prophets; they had their dealings with the grovelling and base among the Jews, whom no one in his right mind would dare to call fiery stones, since they transgressed the divine law and made contracts with gentiles contrary to what it laid down. Nor can one see “I set you on the holy mountain of God” as fitting him. For he did not live in Jerusalem, even if we grant that these things are said of Mount Zion; and what follows shows this clearly.

“For you walked,” he says, “blameless in your days, from the day you were created until injustices were found in you.” Such was the devil before his fall. But of men we hear: “No one is clean from filth, not even if his life on earth be but one day.” This one, however, being bodiless, was blameless at the beginning; but when he gave way to the inclination toward the worse, he went beyond all measure along the opposite road.

“From the multitude of your trade you filled your storehouses with lawlessness, and you sinned, and were wounded.” For not content with the wisdom and authority given you, but longing for greater things, you became full of lawlessness and received the wounds of sin. The prophet Isaiah says of him: “How has the morning star fallen from heaven, he who rose at dawn? He who sends to all the nations has been crushed to the earth.” For though he had all as his subjects, he fell from his tyranny through the saving cross. Then he describes his former madness and his surpassing arrogance: “But you said in your mind: I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne; I will sit on a lofty mountain, upon the lofty mountains toward the north; I will ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” By the mountains toward the north he means the occasions of wickedness; for “from the north,” according to the prophet, “evils will be kindled upon all who dwell on the earth.” Having thus laid bare his conceit, he foretells also his overthrow: “But now you will go down to Hades, to the foundations of the earth.” This the divine Ezekiel too is taught by God to say: “For from the mountain of God,” he says, “the overshadowing cherub brought you down from the midst of the fiery stones.” Then, the cherub, deemed worthy to bear the divine glory, separated him from the holy powers, which are indeed called fiery; but now those who through purity of soul are worthy of the divine visitation, in whose hearts are the ascents of God, according to the divine prophet, have received authority to trample him underfoot.

“Your heart was lifted up at your beauty.” You thought great things of yourself, he says, when you saw the good things I had supplied you. “Your understanding was corrupted together with your beauty.” You were stripped of everything, he says, having abandoned the rank given you. “Because of the multitude of your sins I cast you down to the earth; before kings I have given you to be made an example.” Having practised great wickedness, he says, you fell from the rank above and were cast down below, to be laughed at by those who keep the rank given them and reign well over those in them …

“Because of the multitude of your sins and of the injustices of your trade, you have profaned your holiness.” Let those who contradict say what holiness the impious king of Tyre had; but they could not show any. This one, however, of whom the word now speaks, when he was one of the holy archangels, shared in all holiness; but he himself profaned his holiness by practising a wicked trade, and, desiring more, fell even from what had been given him. This he also brought man to suffer … and by famine and the slaughter of enemies, so that through the … also the causes of the destruction. For he too, made according to the image of God, was led on by his wily words and desired to become God, and so lost besides even his being the image of God. “And I will bring forth fire from the midst of you.” This fits both: the one who worked the wickedness and the king of the Tyrians in whom it was worked; for both provided the occasions for the punishment brought upon them. Of the same kind is what was said through the prophet Isaiah to the Jews: “Behold, all of you kindle fire and strengthen the flame; walk in the light of your fire and in the flame that you have kindled.” And here too, then, he says: “I will bring forth fire from the midst of you; it will devour you.” That is: I will use your own transgressions as the material for the punishments against you. “And I will make you ashes on your land, before all who see you.” This too fits both. For the man fell in his own land and became dust; and the devil, who thought he ruled the world, was overthrown by our God and Saviour and, like ashes, by the pious …

“And all who know you among the nations will be gloomy over you.” For those who still remain in your slavery, seeing the end of the idols and their precincts utterly destroyed, live in dejection, despondent and continually distressed. “You have become destruction, and you will be no more for ever.” By these words he made known his complete overthrow. Having thus completed the lament for Tyre, he passes to Sidon, which was its neighbour, and briefly foretells what will befall it too.

“And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, set your face against Sidon, and prophesy against it, and say: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Sidon, and I will be glorified in you, and you will know that I am the Lord, when I execute judgments in you, and I will be sanctified in you. And I will send upon you death, and blood in your streets, and … in the midst of you with swords in you, and round about you; and they will know that I am the Lord.” Since, he says, you did not know me while you prospered, Sidon, I will surround you with many calamities of every kind, so that you may learn my lordship. He says …

“And there will no longer be for the house of Israel a thorn of bitterness and a briar of pain from all who are round about them, who dishonoured them; and they will know that I am Adonai the Lord.” These things, he says, I will bring upon Tyre and upon the foreigners and upon all who live in the neighbourhood, so that my people may neither have you as a model of impiety, nor have enemies attacking them continually and grieving them without end. Having thus foretold the painful things, he foretells the good things for Israel, which intensifies the pain for those others; for being hostile in their disposition, they made Israel's good fortune a cause of pain. “… the house of Israel from the nations where they were scattered, and I will be sanctified in them before the peoples and the nations, and they will dwell on their own land, which I gave to my servant Jacob. And they will dwell in it in hope, and they will build houses and plant vineyards, and dwell in hope, when I execute judgments on all who dishonoured them among those round about them; and they will know that I am the Lord their God and the God of their fathers.” The God of the universe does not discipline all who sin in the same way, but some one way and others another. Therefore the prophet too said in prayer: “Discipline us, Lord, but in judgment, and not in anger.” The blessed David asked for this very thing: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.” This difference can be seen also in what has just been interpreted. For to the others he has so far promised nothing good; but to Israel he has promised recall, and restoration, and the hope of houses, and the sum of all good things, the knowledge of God. For when these things have happened, he says, “they will know that I am their Lord, and the God of their fathers.” May it be granted to us too to have this knowledge continually, so that we may love him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our power and with all our strength, not dividing our love but devoting it all to him, that we may breathe him and carry about an unquenchable remembrance of him, sitting and rising up, lying down and walking on the way. For so we shall continually enjoy his providence and attain the promised good things, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father be glory, with the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.