Ezekiel (Part 6)

Ezekiel — Steve Gregg

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Ezekiel (Part 6)

EzekielSteve Gregg

In this continuation of Ezekiel's prophecy, Steve Gregg sheds light on the judgments that will befall various nations. While Babylon faces its own fate, Tyre will be reduced to a humble fishing village, experiencing the consequences of its greed and arrogance. Gregg also delves into the symbolic language used to describe the fall of the king of Tyre and cautions against taking these passages as evidence of Satan's origin. Lastly, the prophecy extends to Egypt, with its cities being laid waste and eventually restored after a period of captivity.

Transcript

Chapter 25, we're now beginning the second half of the book. There are 48 chapters altogether. In the first half, which we covered last week, the first 24 chapters, were the early prophecies of Ezekiel that were uttered in the first six years of his ministry before the fall of Jerusalem.

Now, after the fall of Jerusalem, it was not necessary for him to do any more predicting about that, since it was now an accomplished historic fact. His prophecies turned to other matters. Eventually, near the end of the book, the latter chapters will all talk about God's future restoration of the people who had gone into captivity.

Future to Ezekiel, not necessarily future to us. Some of this was fulfilled already in history. But before we get to those sections, talking about the restoration of Israel and the people of Israel, we have some chapters, and they're all put together in one place, that talk against the heathen nations.

The logical reasoning behind placing these chapters here would seem to be that upon the fall of Jerusalem, these nations, at least some of them, would have gloated and been glad to have seen Jerusalem fall, because these nations were historic enemies of Jerusalem. But the prophet now turns to them and implies that they have nothing to gloat about, because they also will come under the judgment of the same kind, that is, from Babylon. It was Babylon that destroyed Jerusalem, and it was Babylon that would judge these other nations as well, soon.

So chapters 25 through 35, generally, are the prophecies that we're talking about, with the exception of chapters 33 and 34. For some reason, chapters 33 and 34 are stuck in this section, and they are not relevant to prophecies against the heathen nations. You recall that in Isaiah, when we studied that book, there were 11 chapters, chapters 13 through 23, in Isaiah, 13 through 23, which were called the burdens.

Each one was the burden of the Lord against so-and-so, the burden of Egypt, the burden of Babylon, the burden of Edom, and so forth. So, 11 chapters put all in one place in Isaiah, and then in Jeremiah also, chapters 46 through 51 of Jeremiah, were again a block of chapters against Gentile nations, even though the prophets mainly spoke against their own people, they usually had something to say also against the Gentiles. But Ezekiel is no different, all of the major prophets seem to do this, and these prophecies against the Gentiles might not have all been prophesied at the same time.

The arrangement is obviously topical, that they're all put together here. And the nations that are blasted by the prophets are in order, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia, or of course the Philistines. These are all addressed in chapter 25, each is given a short treatment, and of course you know each of these nations has been dealt with in former prophets before Ezekiel, and similar things are said here as are said in those places.

Then, there are three chapters against the city of Tyre, those are chapters 26, 27, and 28, against Tyre. And then there are four chapters against Egypt, those are chapters 29, 30, 31, and 32. Then as I said, chapters 33 and 34 are not of a piece with the rest of this section, they are not relevant to the burdens of the nations, they are in chapter 33 mainly a repetition of two other portions of Ezekiel that we've already covered.

In chapter 33 there's part of chapter 3 and part of chapter 18 that are repeated. It's again a repetition of the fact that was brought up in Ezekiel chapter 3 that Ezekiel was to be a watchman to warn the people, and if he saw the danger and refused to warn the people that they would perish and their blood would be on his head. That is from chapter 3, it's repeated in chapter 33.

Also in chapter 18 we recently covered, he had said that the son will not die for his father's sins, and the father will not die for his son's sins, but the soul that sinneth it shall die. You remember that discussion in chapter 18, that also is repeated in chapter 33. So chapter 33 is just a conglomerate of passages that were in two other chapters previously, and they require no separate treatment on this occasion.

Chapter 34 also does not belong to the proxies against the heathen nations. It is a proxy against the evil shepherds of Jerusalem, and a prediction that God would raise up a good shepherd. It's of course a messianic prediction, it's about Christ.

It belongs to the restoration prophecies that we'll cover later. Why it is inserted here is not certain, but chapter 35 then gets back and prophesies against Edom again. Chapter 35 is against Edom, and you recall that chapter 25 had a bit against Edom.

Edom, H-O-M. And so, chapter 35 sort of reverts back to talking about one of the subjects that had been discussed briefly in chapter 25. So chapters 25 through 35 essentially are chapters of this kind.

One chapter deals with Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia. Then there are three chapters against Tyre, four chapters against Egypt, and then after a couple of other chapters that don't talk about such things, you get to chapter 35 and it gets back into railing on Edom. All right.

Now we have read prophecies against all of these nations before. And even if we had not, I would not find it necessary for us to read every verse of these chapters. There are high points, especially in cases where we can identify the fulfillment of the prophecies that I would like to address.

But let's start, and we will read, I suppose, chapter 25 in its entirety, since it deals briefly with four kingdoms. It first deals with Ammon and Moab, and of course those were brother nations. They were nations that arose from two brothers, or I guess you would call them half-brothers, because they were both the sons of Lot by his two daughters, and they gave rise to these two nations.

And since Lot was the nephew of Abraham, there was an ethnic relationship between the Jews and the Ammonites and Moabites. However, you would not know it by their dealings with each other, because Moab and Ammon had been very hostile toward Israel throughout their history. The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against the Ammonites, and prophesy against them, and say unto the Ammonites, Hear the word of the Lord God.

Thus saith the Lord God, Because thou sayest, Aha, against my sanctuary, when it was profane. Notice they were glad when the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. They said, Aha, it's the way we would have it.

And against the land of Israel, when it was desolate, and against the house of Judah, when they went into captivity, behold, therefore I will deliver thee to the men of the east for possession. And they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their dwellings in thee, and they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy milk. And I will make Raba a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching place for the flocks.

And ye shall know that I am the Lord. For thus saith the Lord God, Because thou hast clapped thine hands, and stamped with thy feet, and rejoiced in heart with all thy despise against the land of Israel, behold, therefore I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and I will deliver thee for a spoil to the heathen, and I will cut thee off from the people, that I will cause thee to perish out of the countries. I will destroy thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord." So he predicts doom upon them.

We'll talk about the fulfillment of this in a moment, but after we also look at Moab and Edom. But I would just like to comment here, he points out twice, it is in verse 3 and also in verse 6, that God's main complaint about Ammon was their glee that they took over the misfortunes of Israel and Judah. And he says, well since you rejoiced in that, you're going to get a taste of it yourself.

Then we have a brief passage against Moab, which really Moab and Ammon had a lot in common. Thus saith the Lord God, Because that Moab and Seir do say, Behold, the house of Judah is likened to the heathen. Therefore, behold, I will open the side of Moab from his cities which are on the frontiers, the glory of the country, Beth-Jeshemoth, Baal-me-on, and Kiriathaim, unto the men of the east with the Ammonites, and will give them in possession, that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations, and I will execute judgments upon Moab, and they shall know that I am the Lord." Now in that prophecy in verse 8, Moab is linked with Seir.

Seir is actually the mountain range where the Edomites were, and they come up next in verses 12 through 14. Apparently the Moabites and the Edomites both were making the same statement. Ah, Judah now is like the heathen, it says in verse 8. In other words, mocking in a sense the fact that the people of Judah had always considered themselves God's special people, unlike the heathen.

The term heathen or Gentile always referred to people other than Jews, and the Jews prided themselves that they were not like the heathen, they were the only nation that was different, that was uniquely God's people, and now these heathen nations, who have perhaps always been a bit galled by Judah's sense of self-superiority, are now rejoicing saying, ah, are you any different than the heathen now? You've suffered the same fate as other heathen nations have. God hasn't saved you any more than other nations' gods have saved them from the Babylonians. And, ah, so in other words, in a sense, God was angry because these nations were blaspheming, in that they were saying there is no difference between Judah and the other nations.

Which is the same as saying there's no difference between Judah's God and the gods of the other nations. Because the only sense in which they could say Judah is now like the nations, is that their God did not deliver them from Babylon any more than the gods of the other nations delivered their nations from Babylon, therefore it is a slur against God in what they are doing. And so God says, well, you'll be judged.

In verse 12 then, through 14, the Edomites come up. Now the Edomites, you know, were descended from Esau, and therefore they were more closely related to the Jews than even the Ammonites and the Moabites were. Because Esau was the twin brother of Jacob, and of course was descended from Isaac, and God had said to Abram, in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

Whereas no promises were given to Lot, Abraham's nephew, therefore Ammon and Moab were not particularly close, I mean they were related remotely to the Jews, but Edom was very closely related because it was through Isaac that Abram's seed would be called, and Edom and Judah were both from Isaac, they were from Jacob and Esau. However, it was made clear that Esau was a profane person who cared nothing for spiritual things, sold his birthright and lost his blessing as a result, and he always hated Jacob, except in the lifetime of those two men there was reconciliation. But between the two nations that came from them there was never reconciliation, there was never friendliness between the Edomites and the Jews, there was always hostility.

And proceeds against the Edomites have been frequent in the prophets. In fact, the entire book of Obadiah, short as it is, is directed against the Edomites, and it resembles very closely Jeremiah 49 against the Edomites, and Isaiah has a few chapters against the Edomites also. And remember that in chapter 35 of Ezekiel, which we've already noted, it also takes up the railing against the Edomites again.

They're the only nation that are brought up again in this section of chapters, in chapter 35. So, God had a great controversy with the Edomites. Verse 12 says, Thus saith the Lord God, because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended and revenged himself upon them, therefore thus saith the Lord God, I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it, and I will make it desolate from demons, and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword, obviously chief cities of Edom, and I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel, and they shall do in Edom according to mine anger and according to my fury, and they shall know my vengeance, saith the Lord God.

Thus saith the Lord God, because the... Oh, that changes, I'm sorry. The reference to Edom here seems to put the destruction of Edom at the hands of the Jews. Obviously, the Jews were at war with Edom on many occasions, and so, of course, some damage was done to Edom by the Jews.

The ultimate fall of Edom was not at the hands of the Jews, however. The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, the nations we've already considered in this chapter up to this point, all suffered by Nabataean tribesmen shortly after this time, and ceased to exist. These nations have all become extinct.

The Edomites lasted a little longer than the Moabites and the Ammonites, but they were wiped out eventually, too. And you have probably studied the details of that on more than one occasion. I imagine John went through that in talking about Obadiah and Jeremiah, how the Edomites were wiped out.

Now, the Philistines weren't judged at the same time, but it is said in verses 15 through 17 they also would be judged. Thus saith the Lord God, because the Philistines have dealt by revenge and have taken vengeance with a despiteful heart to destroy it for old hatred, therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold, I will stretch out mine hand upon the Philistines, and I will cut off the Cherithims, they're called that because they're from the island of Crete, which was once called Cherith, the Cherithims, and destroy the remnant of the sea coast, and I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes, and they shall know that I am the Lord when I shall lay my vengeance upon them. And the Philistines, it's not real clear on when they actually disappeared.

They, of course, suffered under Babylonians, they suffered under Persians, they suffered invasions by various groups, nomadic Arab groups and so forth, but however their death blow was dealt to the Philistines, they disappeared from history after Maccabean times, that is in the intertestamental period, after the last book of the Old Testament was written and before Jesus came. During that period there of 400 years, the Philistines just ceased to exist. Though for thousands of years they'd been in Israel and been enemies of the Jews.

Well, now we get to chapter 26, which is the first of three chapters that deal with Tyre. Chapters 26, 27 and 28. We will not read all the verses of these prophecies.

Tyre was a city a little to the north of Israel, just very near to Israel, to the north, and it had the finest seaport in the Mediterranean, that is in that part of the Mediterranean, the eastern Mediterranean. Israel, for instance, didn't have any good seaports, but Tyre had a very fine seaport and was a very wealthy city, because of the amount of merchant trade that went in and out of that place. You've probably heard me give this information before, but Tyre had two parts to the city.

The older city was on the cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, on the sea coast there. And then there was about a half mile offshore, and there was a big island of rock, and the newer part of the city was built on this island, this offshore rock. And this became a strategic advantage for the people of Tyre, because many times they were attacked by hostile powers, and if their city on the mainland fell, they would ordinarily retreat to the city on the island, about a half mile out to sea.

And that was well fortified, and because of the steep rise of the rock from the sea, it was impossible for any known power, any known naval power, to really invade the city of Tyre out on the island. And so they always survived every attack that ever came against them. Well, Ezekiel was prophesying against them, and he was speaking of their fall, and he spoke some very specific things against them.

And let me just read some excerpts from chapter 26, rather than reading the whole chapter here. Look at verse 2. "...Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken, that was the gates of the people, she is turned unto me, I shall be replenished now, she is laid waste," exactly what this implied is not certain. Obviously Tyre was pleased to see the end of Jerusalem.

How Tyre expected to profit from it is not entirely clear. But it says, "...therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus," that's just another way of saying Tyre, "...and I will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causes his waves to come up, and they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.

It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God, and it shall become a spoil to the nations. And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword, and they shall know that I am the Lord. For thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon," a king of kings, "...from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies of much people.

And he shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field, and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee." Let's go down to verse 12-14. "...and they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise, and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses, and they shall lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the water. And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease, and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard.

And I will make thee like the top of a rock, and thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon, thou shalt be built no more, for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God." Now, there's some specific prophecies made here. First of all, as the coasts of Tyre were lapped regularly by waves, because they were on the sea coast, he says, "...just as the waves come one after another of the sea and wash your shores, so also will I bring wave after wave of nations against you." And this, of course, does not refer to any particular one time, but just the fact that repeatedly nations would come against Tyre, each doing its own part, making its own contribution to the ultimate damage and judgment upon the nation. But there would be an ultimate fall also predicted.

It says in verse 4, "...they would come down, they'll scrape the dust off of her, and make her like the top of a rock." This is repeated in verse 14, "...I will make thee like the top of a rock, and thou shalt be a place to spread the nets upon." Also verse 5 mentions spreading the nets. What it is saying, of course, is that at the end of God's judging, Tyre will no longer be a great metropolis and a wealthy trading city, but rather just a place where fishermen park their little boats and spread their nets out to dry in the sun. In other words, it will be just a little fishing village.

Nothing more, nothing great anymore. Then Nebuchadnezzar is named specifically, the Babylonian king, who would come against Tyre. In verse 7, "...upon Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar said that he would come with great company, and he'd slaughter their daughters in the field, and make a fort against them, and cast a mountain against them, and lift up the buckler against them." In other words, they would be attacked by Nebuchadnezzar.

The fact is, Tyre was attacked by Nebuchadnezzar within a few months after Jerusalem fell. So Jerusalem fell, Tyre gloated briefly, and a few months after Jerusalem fell, Nebuchadnezzar came and encircled the city of Tyre on the mainland. He did slay their armies outside the city, but he was not able to penetrate their city.

Even the mainland city had strong walls. Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city for 13 years, but he was not able to defeat it. But of course, he wreaked tremendous damage upon the city.

Any siege that would last 13 years would create famine and so forth within the city. And so a tremendous judgment upon Tyre came through the siege of Nebuchadnezzar. Later on, in Ezekiel's words against Egypt, he points out that God was going to give Nebuchadnezzar Egypt as a consolation prize because he didn't get Tyre.

And because he had to wait so long and besiege Tyre for 13 years and not get anything out of it, God says, I'm going to console him by giving him Egypt. And so that comes up in the proceeds against Egypt. But Nebuchadnezzar never did take the city of Tyre.

However, he inflicted some tremendous hardships upon it. And that is mentioned here. But then it talks, and remember, it is not said in the prophecy that all these things would be done by one king.

It says many nations will come up against thee. And the fulfillment of the latter verses that we read, especially in verse 12, where it says at the end of that verse, they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. And verse 14, they shall make thee like the top of a bough, and thou shalt be as place to spread nets.

This was fulfilled, oh, it must be about 300 years approximately after Nebuchadnezzar's time, and certainly well after Ezekiel's lifetime, because Ezekiel lived contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar. So there is a true, I mean, indisputable predictive element here, because Ezekiel uttered some things that were fulfilled some 200 or 300 years after his time. But what he is talking about is when Alexander the Great, after the Babylonian Empire had fallen to the Persians, the Persian Empire fell to the Greeks, and Alexander the Great was the head of that great conquest, and he came against Tyre also, and he defeated the city on the mainland.

But when the cabinets of Tyre retreated to the island portion of the city, Alexander was not able to take the island. He did not have a strong enough navy to do that, and therefore it seemed as though he and others before him would be thwarted in finally destroying Tyre. But Alexander was a different kind of man than most conquerors before him.

He would not take the role for an extra, and he determined he was not going to let Tyre survive. And so he had his soldiers take the debris of the city that was on the mainland and throw it into the water and build with the debris a causeway between the old city on the shore and the new city out on the island. And he actually built a broad causeway, it's like a jetty, out to the island.

And it took some years to build, but he would not give up until he beat Tyre. And he finally did. Of course, the people of Tyre must have been terrified week after week as they saw this thing getting closer, because he actually succeeded in using all the debris from the destroyed city on the mainland and building this causeway by which his army could march to the island.

And they did. They marched to the island and they took the city on the island. They were the first and last to destroy Tyre, because Tyre never was rebuilt.

And it's interesting, too, that it says in verse 14 here, you shall be built no more. Because most cities of significance were rebuilt after their destruction. At one time or another, Jerusalem was, of course Babylon wasn't, but that was said to be part of the judgment against Babylon also.

But most cities were rebuilt a number of times. In fact, Tyre was rebuilt a number of times, but after this final destruction by Alexander the Great, it has never been rebuilt. And that's interesting, because there is a natural spring of fresh water in the old side of Tyre, which I don't remember exactly what it produces, something like a million or ten million gallons of fresh water per day or something like that, which water in the Middle East is a valuable commodity, and it seems like that would be a very natural place to rebuild the city.

After the dust had settled and the war was over, it would be the very natural thing for people to come back and build the city up, and build the city on the same spot at least, because of the water supply that was there. However, it never has been rebuilt, and you can go on Holy Land tours today, if you wish, and see in Tyre what you will see if you go there is a fishing village with fishermen spreading their nets on the rocks on the shore, exactly as Ezekiel said. Now that was the farthest thing from the description of Tyre in his own day.

Ezekiel, to see this, had to have supernatural prophetic insight from God, because Tyre was nothing like a fishing village in Ezekiel's own day. It was a tremendous merchant city. In chapter 27, it is compared to a merchant ship.

It kind of gives an allegory or a parable of it as a ship. See, it looks in verse 3 of the next chapter, 27, it says, And say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situated in the very entry of the sea, which are a merchant of the people for many isles, thus saith the Lord God, O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas.

Thy builders have perfected thy beauty, and they have made all thy shipboards of fir trees, of cenar, and have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars, and the company of the Asherites have made thy benches of ivory brought out of the isles of Chittim. Now, he's not really describing a literal ship built out of all these expensive things.

He's comparing this merchant city on the seashore with a great merchant ship that is made with the finest of products from every part of the known world. And, of course, what it's suggesting is that Tyre was enriched by the wealth of the whole world. And so, in this figure, it is compared with a ship.

And further judgment upon it is pronounced in this chapter. I don't really know that I want to bring too much out of it. We have too many chapters to cover, and I don't really think there's that much I want to bring out of this particular chapter.

But I do want to get on to chapter 28, which continues the prophecy against Tyre. In chapter 28, it says, The word of the Lord came again to me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyre, 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.

This is made sarcastically, this remark. There is no secret that they can hide from thee. Remember, Daniel was also in Babylon, contemporary with Ezekiel.

By this time, that this prophecy was given, Daniel had been there 19 years, and therefore had been there long enough to become famous for his wisdom and for the insights he got into interpreting dreams and so forth. There were no secrets. Daniel had the reputation throughout the kingdom of being the man to reveal esoteric secrets, because God gave him insights.

And so when it says to Tyre, you must consider yourself wiser than Daniel, it doesn't say it quite in words, but it's obviously quite sarcastically, it says you are wiser than Daniel. Just as in chapter 27, when he says in verse 4, your builders have perfected your beauty, or in verse 3, you said of yourself, I am of perfect beauty. He's actually representing the way they think of themselves.

They think of themselves as being of perfect beauty and perfect wisdom, wiser than Daniel. It says in verse 4 here, chapter 28, 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.

Now, by your traffic means, of course, by your commerce at the sea, they've increased riches, and now because they are rich, they feel quite arrogant as a city. They feel quite immune to destruction. They feel, of course, superior because they are wealthy.

It says, Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God. See, many times when people become wealthy, they become self-secure, self-confident, and they put themselves in the place of God. A person who is poor will have more of a tendency to look to God and know his need for God.

But those who are rich have a different God, and their riches generally are their God. Behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee, and terrible of nations, and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and so forth. And we already talked about how that was fulfilled against Ty.

He's just repeating the prophecy of doom. Now, let's go down to verse 11, because in verses 11 through 19, we have a very interesting prophecy, which the most interesting thing about it is that it has been, for some reason, interpreted very differently than it would naturally be understood. Let me read it, first of all, and then I'll talk to you about what has been commonly taught about this prophecy.

Moreover, verse 11, The word of the Lord came to 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 sun, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, and the gold.

The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou wast 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, and 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.

Now, a portion of this prophecy, we read verses 11-19, but a portion of it, usually up to about verse 17, is often quoted in discussions about the origin of Satan. And we talked about the origin of Satan in a topical study recently, and we also talked about it in Isaiah chapter 14. In Isaiah chapter 14, there's a prophecy against Lucifer set in a context which appears to be a prophecy against the king of Babylon.

But it is usually said, by at least the more popular teachers that we commonly hear, that Lucifer in Isaiah 14 is Satan, and that he was an angel before he fell, and that he became the devil. I only have this to say about Isaiah 14, is that it is the only place in the Bible that mentions Lucifer. The name Lucifer appears nowhere else in the Bible but in Isaiah 14.

And in that place, it does not identify Lucifer with Satan. Therefore, the very common and traditional identification of Lucifer and the devil is a traditional one, not a biblical one. There's no place in the Bible that identifies Lucifer with Satan.

It's someone's interpretation, it's somebody's guess. It may be correct, but it may not be correct, and we can't really settle it from reading Isaiah 14. Reading Isaiah 14, there is nothing in the passage that suggests that Isaiah 14 is talking to anyone other than the king of Babylon, who is the one that it appears to be about.

Chapters 13 and 14 of Isaiah are a prophecy against Babylon. Well, this passage also, when people talk about the origin of Satan, they usually quote from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, this passage. And usually it is believed that the Lucifer of Isaiah 14 is the same as this king of Tyre in verse 12 of Ezekiel 28, and that we are reading another description of the fall of Satan.

Now, let me point out at the outset, there is no place in this passage that speaks of Lucifer. There is no mention of Lucifer, there is no mention of the devil, and we well know that the prophecy itself says it is about the king of Tyre. Now, just as the passage in Isaiah 14 falls in a context that is a prophecy against Babylon and the king of Babylon, this falls in context of a prophecy against Tyre and the king of Tyre.

Now, the things that are said here, in some ways have been thought to correspond with what is said of Lucifer in Isaiah 14. However, there is very little resemblance. The only two things the passages have in common is that they both speak of a king who was once powerful and is going to be judged and no more be powerful, and other kings will look upon them and they will be humiliated before those that they once had superiority over.

Now, that can be true of many kings and it certainly is true not only of the king of Babylon, as history worked out, but also of the king of Tyre. So, in other words, there is no reason to say that this passage is talking about the same person as Isaiah 14 is. In fact, the evidence would be against it.

Isaiah 14 appears to be about the Babylonian king, where this is about the king of Tyre. Two different nations that fell on different occasions, in fact, very different occasions. And so, we might say, well, why then would anyone say that this is a prophecy about Satan? Or that this is a description of the fall of Satan that had already occurred before the creation of the world? And the answer to that, I'll give you.

I'll tell you why people say that. Now, I myself strongly doubt the identification of this passage with anything to do with Satan. I don't really see Satan in the passage, but many have, and I used to, because I was told that this was about that.

And for many years, I never questioned it any more than I questioned that the Lucifer passage in Isaiah 14 was about Satan, until I finally studied those passages and studied the book of Isaiah and the book of Ezekiel. The more I read it, the more I began to say, well, where in the world do we get the idea that this is talking about Satan? There's nothing in the passage that says so, and there's nothing in the New Testament that quotes these passages in that connection. Therefore, where do we get that information? Well, in this case, it comes from a number of features within this description.

First of all, it is pointed out that in verse 12, the prophecy is against the king of Tyre, whereas in verse 2, it is against the prince of Tyre. And what is usually argued here is that the prophecy in verses 1 through 10 is against the actual physical king in Tyre, who is called the prince of Tyre by the prophet. Whereas the prophecy that takes up at verse 12 is against the real power behind the throne, the real spiritual principality, the real spiritual king of Tyre, who is really more of authority than the actual man who is the king of Tyre, and they say this is Satan.

Further, it is argued that it says in verse 13, thou hast been in Eden. Now, Eden is the garden, of course, in Genesis, where God put Adam and Eve and where the serpent was and where Adam and Eve were tempted and fell. And therefore, it is argued there were not very many people in Eden.

Adam and Eve were the only two humans that were there. Then there was the serpent and also, of course, God walked with him in the garden of Eden. So there were four persons in Eden.

And it is argued by virtue of the process of elimination that this prophecy is not against God and it is not against Adam and Eve, who are already dead, but this is a prophecy against someone who is in Eden. That leaves only the serpent, that leaves only Satan to be the person that it is talking about. Further, it says in verse 14, you are the anointed cherub that covereth.

And we well know that a cherub is not a human being. A cherub is a spiritual, angelic kind of a being. Therefore, we say this must be a prophecy against an angelic being who was in Eden.

That would seem to identify him as Satan. And saying it is the king of Tyre as opposed to the prince of Tyre would imply that this being is the power behind the throne of the pagan nations. There are some other items here.

It says in verse 12, at the end there, it says, Thou seest up to some full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. And also in verse 15, Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. Now, it references to the perfection of this being, the perfection of this person.

Perfect in beauty, full of wisdom, perfect in righteousness, or Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. This perfection, they say, would not refer to a human being, because no one is perfect. But to an angel of God, these words can apply.

And they would then point out a few other items. Once they have used these arguments to identify the person in view as Satan, they add some interesting things. For instance, where it says in verse 13, Every precious stone which you are covering, and it mentions the Sardis, the Tobit, and all the precious stones and gold as well.

They say, well, see, this is a picture of Satan in an earth that was covered with precious metals and precious stones. Probably before the fall. In fact, some of them felt, usually these are the people who believe in the gap theory in Genesis.

They believe there is this big gap between the first two verses of Genesis. Which says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then they postulate a huge gap of maybe millions of years for evolution to take place.

And then in verse 2, it says, and the earth was, or could be translated, became formless and void. And they say, well, what really happened is God created the heavens and the earth in a beautiful state. And he gave Lucifer, or the devil, before he fell, dominion over a race of beings that lived on this earth.

But then, because of the rebellion of Lucifer, and because of the rebellion of that race, judgment came upon it with a great overflowing of water, so that we read in Genesis 1, 2, and the earth became formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and so forth. In other words, they postulate a whole scenario between the first two verses of Genesis, where Satan was given some kind of rulership on this planet, and then he led a rebellion against God. God's judgment came, and then when we read the rest of the verses in chapter 1 of Genesis, we're reading of God recreating circumstances on the face of the earth.

And so the Garden of Eden in the days of Adam and Eve seems to be full of fruit trees, but it's suggested here that the same garden before the judgment came upon was mainly characterized by precious metals, and that like a serpent living under the rocks, he was covered by precious metals. And then in the end of verse 13, it says, the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. This, to my utter amazement, has been widely used to argue this interesting point.

It is usually argued by people who teach worship seminars, and who teach Christian music leading. They use this verse, and this verse alone, to make this tremendous picture for us. They say, before Satan fell, he was one of the chief angels, perhaps one of the three archangels, Gabriel and Michael being the other two.

And he was given power over a third of the angels, and his function in heaven was to lead the angels in their worship. He was the chorus leader, the choir leader of heaven, as it were. And he was, music was such an integral part of his nature, that he actually had musical influence built into his body.

That's what I've heard, I've heard this talk from many sources, and it's all from this verse, where it says, the workmanship of thy tabrets and pipes, well these are musical instruments, was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. This, they say, well you see, this being, this lovely creature, this angelic being, was over the worship singing in heaven, like the choir director, and he had these musical instruments built into his body. He was so, music was such an integral part of him.

And then they usually argue from this, you can see why the devil uses music so much to get people into drugs and things like that. And, you know, all this kind of stuff. Well, this is, to my mind now, one of the most fantastic manipulations of scripture, that has ever been perpetrated and failed to be unmasked, generally, at large in the body of Christ.

I mean, many silly doctrines have been promoted about various passages in the Bible, which are easily refuted, and errors easily seen in them by evangelicals at large. But this one seems to have gone uncovered for the most part. Now, you can read many good scholars who totally, absolutely deny that there is anything about Satan in this chapter.

I'm always relieved to find a few level-headed people who seem to question the popular notion. But the popular notion is held largely by people who are not very deep in their Bible study, I must say. And I'm not trying to insult them as a group, but I have to say that most Christians, including myself, find Ezekiel a difficult book to understand.

Ezekiel uses a lot of poetic language, a lot of flowery language, he sees bizarre visions, he speaks like no other prophet speaks, and it's one of the most difficult passages to understand. And I don't blame the average Christian, especially one who is not particularly a Bible scholar, for having parts of Ezekiel that he doesn't understand. And if an ordinary Christian is told by some esteemed Christian leader that this particular passage of Ezekiel is talking about the fall of Satan, well, then who is the average Christian to dispute it? I mean, who could say otherwise? Well, I would say that to devote just a little bit of study to the book of Ezekiel would help to yield a tremendous amount of insight on this passage.

And I'd just like to go through the specific arguments that are brought up that I've just mentioned in favor of this being Satan. And I'd just like to show you how a better study of the book of Ezekiel would eliminate the misunderstanding in these cases. Now, my position is that this is simply a continuation of the prophecy against the human king of Tyre, that there is no reference to Satan in this passage, and that is, of course, the view held by historic scholars through the ages for the most part, but there is a popular trend to see it as a passage about Satan.

Well, what about this matter that in verse 2 the man is called the Prince of Tyre, whereas in verse 12 it's talking to the King of Tyre? The distinction is only literary. Earlier, he had spoken about the kings of Judah as princes. And it's very common for the word prince and king to be substituted for each other throughout the prophets, because every king was at the same time a prince.

Every king in Judah, at least, had been the son of another king and therefore had spent much of his life as a prince. And therefore, to speak of a man as a prince in one breath and as a king in another is not contradictory. Both things can be said true of most kings, that they are also princes or have been princes.

And in this case, in calling a king a prince, it may be simply in trying to de-elevate him and show that in the eyes of God he's not such a powerful man. He's only a prince, not a king. At the same time, to speak of him later as the King of Tyre is to simply call him by what his official and true title is.

The man is the King of Tyre. And there's no reason to say that there must be a different individual involved here, simply because one passage calls him the Prince of Tyre and another calls him the King of Tyre. The terms are definitely interchangeable.

Then when we go on to the question of having been in Eden, in the Garden of Eden, of course, if we take this literally, then we must confess that this could refer to no one other than Satan because Adam and Eve cannot be in view. They're dead and the things describing this person are not true of Adam and Eve. Nor, of course, would it be a reference to God because this is all negative and the prophets don't speak against God.

Therefore, we'd have to say if this person was literally in the Garden of Eden, then he certainly must have been Satan. On the other hand, just a little more careful reading of the prophets, and particularly of Isaiah, would show us that the reference to him being in Eden is not a literal statement. And we only have to read a few chapters more to see this very clearly.

If we get to chapter 31 of Ezekiel, there is a prophecy about... It's in the midst of a prophecy against Egypt. In verse 3, there's a prophecy. It says, Behold, the Assyrian was a seder in Lebanon.

Now, many scholars feel like the Assyrian actually should be rendered the Egyptian. And we'll talk about the various translations of that when we get to this passage, and that will be later today in this morning's session, but we won't take the time now. At any rate, verse 3 is either talking about the Assyrian king or the Egyptian king, or the Assyrian nation or the Egyptian nation.

It is not talking about Tyre, in other words, nor Jerusalem. It's talking about a nation that was contemporary with Ezekiel. It says, Behold, the Assyrian was a seder in Lebanon.

This is Ezekiel 31.3. With fair branches and with a shadowing shroud and a high stature, and his top was among the thick boughs. Now, the Assyrian nation, or the Egyptian if that's what it's referring to, is compared to a tree. Just as Tyre was compared to a ship, so now another image, another parable is used.

This nation is compared to a tree. Now, what does it say? Let's look over at verses 8 and 9. The seders in the garden of God could not hide him, that is, hide the Assyrians. The fir trees were not like his boughs.

The chestnut trees were not like his branches. Nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches, so that all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied him.

Now, here we have another reference to Eden, but the setting is very clearly not a reference to the historic Eden. It's in another figurative statement about another king, in this case the Assyrian or the Egyptian, depending on how we take the Hebrew in this case. But the point here is it was talking about a king contemporary with Ezekiel, using figurative language comparing him to a tree that was a flourishing, powerful, notable tree.

And in saying that he was superior to all the other nations about him at one time, and that he was highly respected and superior to others, it uses this image. All the other trees in the garden of God, all the trees of Eden envied him. Now, who are these other trees? Well, they must be referenced to the other kings or the other kingdoms.

If he is a tree, the king in this case, then the other trees must be the other kings. In other words, it's a figure of speech. All the trees of Eden simply means all those who enjoyed the luxuries of royalty, who lived in a paradisical situation comparable to that of Eden, as far as their viewpoint is concerned.

All of them envied him because he was the greatest of them all. Now, Eden, therefore, simply stands for an idyllic situation, a very desirable paradise kind of a circumstance of life, rather than a literal reference to the garden of Eden in history. Let me show you a few other places and other prophets just to show that the prophets tend to use Eden in this way rather than literal.

In Isaiah chapter 51 and verse 3, Isaiah 51, 3 says, For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of money. We recently studied Isaiah and we talked about this type of passage that talks about the restoration of the wilderness into a garden or into a fruitful field.

We showed that, and it can be well demonstrated by comparing Scripture with Scripture, that Isaiah in these passages is usually talking about a spiritual transformation rather than physical. But he's talking about the fruitfulness of a person's life in Christ as being like a garden of the Lord. Jeremiah used similar language in Jeremiah 31, 12, it said, Their soul shall be like a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more at all.

So the comparison of a person's soul spiritually to the garden of Eden is used by the prophets. But in this case, that isn't the meaning in Ezekiel. It's not as though the man's soul is in paradise, but in his natural circumstances, he's got it made.

In other words, just like Adam and Eve in Eden had it made, so this guy had it made. I mean, he was rich, he was powerful, he was the envy of all the others around him. He was in Eden.

He was in paradise. Now, we use that kind of language. We don't use the word Eden so much as we use the word paradise, but the idea is we use the word paradise symbolically that way too.

This guy's really in paradise. He's on cloud nine or whatever. There's a lot of different images that are identical to it, but there's no reason to believe that Ezekiel is in Eden in a literal sense here, when we know he certainly isn't four chapters later in chapter 31, when he says the Assyrian tree was ended and all the other trees in Eden.

So clearly we're not talking about literal Eden here, therefore we're not compelled to see this as one of the four characters that were in the garden of God in Genesis. He was in Eden? Yeah, the... In Adam. In Adam, yeah, right, that's true.

All the nations were in Adam at one point. And just as Abraham, or as Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek in Abraham, because he had not yet come from the loins of his father, so the king of Tyre and the king of Assyria and all men were in Eden in Adam. That's a good point.

Right, that's not what he's saying here, I don't think, but it's quite true. It's quite true that all of us were in Eden in the DNA of Adam. So anyway, the reference to Eden is not conclusive about anything.

In verse 14, the reference to him is an anointed cherub that covereth. Again, this is argued in favor of the fact that this is not talking about a human being, but an angelic being. Nonetheless, the cherubs are described for us elsewhere in Ezekiel.

The cherubs are described in chapter 1 and chapter 10. They have four faces and four wings, and they have the face of an ox, the face of an eagle, the face of a lion, and the face of a man. Even those who understand this to be about Lucifer don't usually picture him as one of those beings.

They usually think he's an archangel, and an archangel and a cherub obviously appear to be different kinds of beings, because when archangels like Michael appeared, or Gabriel, they did not have these characteristics. So if this is talking about Satan, then we cannot at the same time say he was an archangel. We'd have to say he was a cherub.

To say that this is a literal cherub is no more necessary than to say that he was in literal Eden. Rather, he's saying, what is a cherub? A cherub was a being that guarded something. In fact, in Eden there was a cherub that was set, God set cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life after Adam fell.

That was not Satan. I mean, if we want to say this was a cherub that was in Eden, let's be more realistic. We have to say it's the cherub that God put there to guard the way to the tree of life.

If we want to make it Satan, let's make it the cherub that we know was there in Genesis. However, to say that is literal is stretching things too far. Just as it is not the literal Eden that he's referring to, it's not a literal cherub, he's rather saying that as cherubs in the economy of God are guardians, always guarding something, the Ark of the Covenant, the tree of life, the chariot of God in Ezekiel chapter 1, so Tyre, the king of Tyre, like all kings, was set by God to be a guardian of his people, to cover them, to provide an authority structure as a covering to them.

You are the anointed cherub that covereth. Anointed means oil was poured upon him. And, of course, every king ordinarily was anointed when he took office.

So, to speak of him as a cherub is figurative, poetic language, but it is quite suitable in the context, because you'll see that there's very flamboyant language used here. For instance, the statement we already referred to in verse 12, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, and then in verse 15, you were perfect in your ways. Well, if that is literally, if they are literally perfect in those respects, then we would have to say this is something other than a human being, because there's no man perfect in these senses.

Yes? I don't know how to quote you, but I'll ask. It says that we're supposed to try to be perfect. Be perfect as God is perfect.

Right. In fact, I was going to bring that verse up. Yeah, Jesus said at the end of Matthew chapter 5, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father is perfect.

And we know that to be perfect in the sense that God is perfect can't be an absolute statement. First of all, because God is perfect in ways that we can't be. For instance, he has perfect knowledge.

He has perfect wisdom. He is perfect in the sense that he is limitless. We're not limitless.

We don't have perfect knowledge. Paul himself said, We know in part, and prophesy in part. Therefore, God cannot mean that we must be perfect in every sense, even though he uses the term as though it is absolute.

He says, Be perfect as your Father is. And he puts the parallel to that statement of Jesus that is found in Luke. The quote, Be perfect as your Father is perfect, is in Matthew 5. But if you look at its parallel in Luke 6, he says, Be merciful as your Father is merciful.

And in the context, he's saying, Don't just be merciful to those who are your friends, but be merciful to those who are your enemies also. Let your mercy be of the complete perfect type that includes even your adversaries and not only your friends. But the point here shows that the word perfect may be used in a place in the Bible that sounds absolute in its usage, but by comparing scripture with scripture, it is not literally meaning absolutely perfect.

In fact, in this case, we have good cross-referencing in the same chapter. Because we saw, well, as far as being full of wisdom, look at verses 4 and 5, which we read, With thy wisdom, well, in verse 3, Thou art wiser than Daniel, he says sarcastically. That was their impression of themselves.

That's no more to be taken literally than their statement in verse 2, I sit in the seat of God and I am a God. He says, You're not a God. But that's the way men sometimes think of themselves, wiser than Daniel, full of wisdom, perfect in wisdom.

It says in verse 4, With thy wisdom and with thine understanding, thou hast gotten thee riches. And verse 7 says, Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, and terrible nations, they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom. Now, we know that in that passage, he's not talking about Satan, he's talking about the prince of Tyre.

And so for the same subjects to come up with the same language in this other passage, does not mean that we have to see it as someone different. In fact, in chapter 27, which we saw a moment ago in verse 3, it said, Say to Tyrus, O thou that art situated in the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, let's say to the Lord God, O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. In other words, we are told that that was what Tyre said about himself.

I am perfect in beauty. Well, now in chapter 28, which we're reading, in verse 12 he says, You fill up the sum, you're full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. He's basically quoting back what their impression of themselves is.

And so he's essentially saying, so this is what you are. Well, let me tell you what you're going to become. You think yourself perfect in beauty? You think yourself full of wisdom? You think yourself to be perfect in all your ways? Well, since I found iniquity in you, I'm going to show you that I can bring your doom.

Okay, so these references do not mean that it's really talking about a being that had no flaws. It is repeating back to the King of Tyre language that we see the King of Tyre was using about himself. And one other point I'd like to make here, or two, one is in verse 16.

It says, By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence. Thou hast sinned, therefore I will cast thee as a profane out of the mountain of God. I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

Well, obviously he says, O covering cherub, so he's still talking to the same person here in verse 16. He's still talking to the covering cherub. But what did he say? You've been profane by the multitude of your merchandise.

Merchandise, commerce. There's reference to the trafficking also further down here. Where is it? Verse 18.

It says, By the iniquity of thy traffic. And you have filled your sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities by the iniquity of thy traffic. Notice he's still talking about the same thing he was talking about earlier in the chapter.

Where he talks about their commerce and the riches they made by merchandising goods. And to say that Satan fell because he was involved in commerce doesn't seem to fit anyone's picture of the fall of Satan. It doesn't seem to fit the interpretation here.

And further, I guess a final point to show that this is not referring to the fall of Satan. All those who say that it is, indicate and they believe that Satan fell very early in human history. At least before the fall of Adam and Eve.

And yet notice that the prophecy predicts a future destruction of this person that is being addressed. He says in the middle of verse 16, I will cast thee as a profane out of the mountain of God. I will destroy thee, O covering cherub.

And so forth. The judgment upon this creature or this person is future, not past. He's not describing something that happened thousands of years before Ezekiel's time.

He's prophesying something that will happen. Now we know that sometimes the prophets speak about future things as though they already happened. They use sometimes what we call the prophetic perfect tense.

As though they're seeing it happen. Or as they see a vision, the destruction that really in history is yet to come. But they're seeing it prophetically as though it's already there.

But we have no instance to my knowledge in the prophecy where they speak of something that already has happened. And speak of it in the future tense. You see what I mean? Sometimes they'll speak of future things as though they're past.

Because the prophetic insight caused them to see them as though it's an accomplished thing. But I know of no case in scripture where they talk about a past incident in history and speak of it as though it's future. And therefore this would be very unique if it was talking about the fall of Satan before the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And yet speak of it in the future tense. I will judge you. I will cast you down.

I will do this and that. It would be very strange. It seems rather more natural to understand this in a context.

As a continuation of the prophecy against the king of Tyre. Using, as Ezekiel does, much flowery language, poetic language. And therefore language which if a person is not familiar with Ezekiel and tends to take everything absolutely literally as we would prefer in our western way of writing and thinking.

It could lead someone to misunderstand. But in the east, in the orient, and in the middle east where this was written and where it was read originally. It would have been understood that the language was poetic and that the language was flowery.

And that language was not necessarily to be understood as literal as other similar passages in Ezekiel have shown. Yes, Robin. The prophecy concerning casting the good God towards Satan in the lake of fire.

Casting him in the lake of fire? Or somehow in the desert. Well, if this were a reference to Satan, then we could say yes, maybe it's talking about the ultimate judgment. But notice, there is no reference to any judgment or any fall of this person except the future one.

For instance, it talks about this being perfect in beauty, perfect in wisdom, perfect in all his ways. Then it talks about the judgment of this person. And it does not imply that there is any judgment that is already overtaken.

But that he is still in his position, he is still in Eden, he is still the covering cherub. I will cast you out, oh covering cherub. But at this point of writing, you are still the covering cherub.

You are still all that you ever were. In fact, you are in your heyday now. So that if this were a description of Satan before his fall, as Ezekiel has argued, then we would have to argue that he still had not fallen at the time that Ezekiel spoke.

Because there is no suggestion that this person who is addressed has already experienced any kind of upsetting of his ego of any kind. But that is all future. So I would say, if, Robin, if we had it on other evidence that this was a passage about Satan, if there was sufficient reason to say so, then we could take this future thing that it says, I will cast you out, and we could say, okay, that applies to the ultimate final judgment of Satan at the end of time when Jesus comes back.

But in the absence of such evidence, and in the absence of any suggestion that the king of times who is being addressed has already suffered any kind of calamity at the hands of God, I would say that that mutates with the other information against that suggestion. Now, I want to then deal with the two points that were brought up in verse 13, because the reference to having every stone, every precious stone for your covering, again, in the picture that some people have in their minds of this being Satan, they think of a garden with these precious stones and the snakes living around it with stones. Is it not more natural to think of a natural king with jewels all over him? Wearing all kinds of jewels on his crown and on his breastplate and around his neck, he is covered with jewels, as most wealthy kings would be.

He has become rich by his merchandise. He has got the best jewels from every part of the world. And, of course, the king saves the best for himself and for his own ornamentation.

So he has got all the precious stones for his covering, for his clothing, for his ornamentation. That is a more natural way to understand it than to think of snakes living around under rubies. And the statement about, at the end of verse 13, the workmanship of thy tabrets and thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created, again, to suggest that that means there is talking to a person who has pipes and tambourines as organs of his body, to me sounds so fantastic as to make me wonder how anyone could have really conceived that this is what that means.

It is far more natural to understand that from the early days of Tyrus' history, it has always been a place that has enjoyed prosperity and mirth and dancing and celebration and parties and music was always a part of its life. But that is going to change, he is saying. As he says many times of Jerusalem and other prophecies, your singers, there will be no more singing, no more dancing, no more rejoicing in you when my judgment comes upon you.

But the point here is, throughout your history you have known nothing but mirth, prosperity, luxury, music and dancing, joy, but now judgment will come and that is a more, I think, proper way to understand the statement of the workmanship of thy tabrets and thy pipes. Yes? I have a question, I have a comment. Getting back to Isaiah and Ezekiel, in chapter Ezekiel 28, it says, Thus saith the Lord, Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God.

It says in Isaiah 14, 13, Thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will fly from above the stars of God, Now, could these two guys be messengers of Satan? Well, there is no need to see it that way, you see, because many men have called themselves gods. Nebuchadnezzar called himself a god. A lot of kings required their subjects to worship them as God.

And in this passage in verse 2 that you quoted in chapter 28 here, in verse 2, no one argues that that passage is talking about Satan. See, those who argue that this passage has something to do with Satan only include verses 11 through about 17. But they point out the contrast between that part and the early part of the chapter, and they say that the early part of the chapter is just talking about the natural king of Tyre.

So there is really, to say that this king, a natural human being, said, I am God, I sit in the seat of God, is quite realistic. I mean, many kings have said similar things. And the same thing in Isaiah 14, where Lucifer says, I will ascend to the height above the stars of God.

That's exactly how Babylon began. The Tower of Babel was built for that very purpose, to have its top among the stars of heaven, and to seat themselves above the stars. And Babylon was begun at the Tower of Babel.

So you see, the language does not compel us to apply the passage to anything other than kings, whom the context indicates their address to. Now, as I commonly like to say, out of all fairness, if we had evidence from other sources that this was a description of Satan, like, I mean, if it was quoted in the New Testament, for instance, as a reference to Satan, or if there is something else in the passages that compelled us to that, then I would have no objection to seeing that here. And for many years of my life, because I was told that these passages were talking about that, I did see it there, and I had no objection to it.

My main concern now is that we don't read into things that isn't there. And just looking at the passage, and considering all the passages relevant to the subject, I don't see anything there that compels us to this view that is so widely taught. And I must say that the view is widely taught not because there is more there than we've discussed now, that these people who teach it don't have more evidence that I'm withholding from you.

We've looked at all the evidence there is. The reason they teach it is because it has become a tradition in the Church, which began with some, I've mentioned before, Tertullian taught it, Gregory the Great taught it, and it was popularized in Milton's work, I believe it was, Paradise Lost. And since those times, people have kind of taken for granted that these passages are talking about that.

If they are talking about that, it certainly isn't clear to me. And I would have never come to that conclusion just reading them if someone else didn't tell me it, no matter how deeply I studied it. You know, you read guys like F.F. Bruce and the very leading evangelical scholars today who know the Bible as well as any man on earth, and they don't believe this is about Satan.

It seems to me like it's more of a sensational bent that people sometimes have that want to see sensational things in the Scriptures that add these kinds of interpretations, but I don't find it in the passage. So there will be a take of this, chapter 20 of Ezekiel 11 through 17 out of context, pretty much. It seems so.

It is saying that the prophet shifts his view at verse 11 without notifying anybody that he's doing so. You know, all of a sudden he's been talking for two and a half chapters about the King of Tyre, and he continues to talk to the King of Tyre, at least that's the name he uses in verse 12, and yet in reality he's changed his focus and he's talking about someone altogether different, but he hasn't let the readers in on that fact. It's just something that only the prophet knew, and only apparently the one to whom he's speaking knows, but to suggest that he's done that is an artificial way of constructing the chapter.

I want to just say that the last few verses of the chapter, verses 20 through 26, are about Sidon, which was sort of a sister city to Tyre. Tyre and Sidon are frequently mentioned together. It also fell to Nebuchadnezzar, and both cities today are small fishing ports in Lebanon.

When we get to chapters 29 through 32, we have prophecies against Egypt. Egypt is compared to a dragon in verse 3, which is something that is done in other parts of the Scripture, also chapter 32, and verse 2 we have this comparison, though King James covers it up. In Ezekiel 32, it says, Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and art as a whale.

The word whale in the Hebrew should better be translated dragon, and your marginal reference probably says so. So the king of Egypt is called a dragon. This also is true in Psalm 74, which is a prophecy, or not a prophecy, but a psalm that commemorates the Exodus and how the Jews escaped from Egypt.

And there in Psalm 74, verses 12 and following, we have a commemoration of how the Egyptian armies were destroyed in the Red Sea when God brought it crashing down upon them after the Jews had safely crossed. But it says in that passage, Psalm 74, verses 12 through 15, For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength.

Thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou breakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. Thou didst cleave the mountain and the flood.

Thou dried up the mighty rivers. Again, poetic language needs to be accounted for here. But it's talking about dividing the sea when the Jews escaped and were saved out of Egypt.

And it talks about how he broke the heads of Leviathan, which is considered to be a sea dragon, and says, You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. It was the Egyptians who were killed in the waters. Therefore, we see the word dragon again speaks of Egypt.

This is common enough in the Old Testament. It also, in the New Testament, of course, the dragon in the New Testament, the book of Revelation, depicts Satan. But the interesting thing about that is that Egypt in the Old Testament is a type of the captivity that God's people had before Jesus saves them.

As the Jews were slaves in Egypt, were saved by the Passover lamb to escape and go to the Promised Land, so we were slaves of sin and of the devil. And we were set free by the blood of Jesus, our Passover lamb, to go into the spiritual Promised Land. But in that case, of course, Satan, who was sort of like Pharaoh, held the people captive.

And in the New Testament, the dragon who represented Egypt in the Old Testament represents Satan himself in the New, in Revelation, for instance. Revelation 12 identifies the dragon as Satan and has him pursuing God's people into the wilderness, as the Pharaoh sought to do. So there are a lot of connections there between the Old Testament and the New, where the image of the Exodus is brought out.

But here, dragon refers to Egypt. Now, in these four chapters, there are seven prophecies against Egypt. And all of them except one are dated.

That is, he tells what year they happened in, that he gave these prophecies. The first prophecy is in verses 1 through 16. And he gives the date in verse 1. The date he gives is January of 587 B.C. You may or may not want to write that down, but it probably will be of no value to you to know that.

But he does give the date, and that is what the date is. It's January of 587 B.C. And the main thought of this prophecy has to do with the fact that God will judge the land of Egypt because of Pharaoh's pride in placing himself among the gods. In Egypt, they had many gods they worshipped, and the Pharaoh was one of them.

And God is going to be judgment upon Pharaoh and on Egypt because of the Pharaoh's prideful exalting himself to be among the gods. That's what the prophecy in verses 1 through 16 is about. The next prophecy of the seven is in verses 17 through 21, which is of course the remainder of this chapter.

And it was uttered on New Year's Day of 571 B.C. And it's saying essentially there that at the end of the siege of Tyre, and remember I said Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Tyre for 13 years, this prophecy is saying when he gives up on Tyre, he's going to turn down to Egypt. And God's going to give him Egypt. Verse 20 says, I have given him the land of Egypt for his labor for which he served against it, because they wrought for me, saith the Lord God.

That is, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, who is the focus of this particular oracle, did God's work in bringing punishment upon Tyre, but he got nothing out of it, so God's going to give him Egypt as a consolation prize. Chapter 30 then has the next prophecy against Egypt, and it's verses 1 through 19. Chapter 30, verses 1 through 19.

And the main idea of this prophecy is that Nebuchadnezzar will bring God's judgment against Egypt's wealth and gods. Egypt's wealth and Egypt's gods will be judged through the instrumentality of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. That is what is spoken up there.

In verse 13 of that prophecy it mentions a city called Noph, which will be punished, and in verse 14 a city called Noh. Noph is Memphis, not Tennessee, but Memphis, Egypt, which is now extinct and was formerly a capital of idolatry in Egypt. The city called Noh in verse 14 is Thebes, another Egyptian city which is now broken up into small villages, has come under judgment, and is small and insignificant now.

The next prophecy against Egypt is in verses 20 through 26 of chapter 30. And it was uttered in April of 587 B.C. So you can see these are not necessarily given in strict chronological order that they were received. For instance, the first one that we saw was in the same year, but the second one was several years later.

And then we get back to this year again. This is a prophecy about Pharaoh Hophra, one of the pharaohs, who made a half-hearted attempt to help Jerusalem. He didn't really do much good.

Remember, Isaiah and others told Jerusalem not to trust in Egypt because they wouldn't be much help. But Pharaoh Hophra did make a slight half-hearted attempt to come to Jerusalem's aid for mercenary reasons, but this unsuccessful attempt would lead to further defeat of Egypt from Babylon. We won't read the individual verses simply because we don't have the time, and they are not that necessary for us to read.

Chapter 31, then, we have the entire chapter is one prophecy. The time of this prophecy, again, was the same year, 587 B.C., this time in June. And we saw a moment ago that it contains a prophecy where it says, Behold, the Assyrian was a seeder in Lebanon.

Now, it seems strange for the Assyrian to be mentioned here in a series of prophecies against Egypt. And to know that Ezekiel has not changed his view, he's still talking against Egypt. We can show that, for instance, by looking at verse 2, Son of man, speak unto the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and to his multitude.

At the end of the chapter, there's also reference to Pharaoh. Let me see, where does that... Well, let's see. Verse 18? Yeah, okay, yeah, at the end of verse 18.

This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God. So, these references to Egypt and Pharaoh have led some to believe that, in verse 3 where it says, The Assyrian, that that's a textual corruption. That actually it should say that Egypt, because Egypt is really the focus of this prophecy, Pharaoh is still the main concern.

And so, some have suggested that the Assyrian should be rendered differently. For instance, the Jerusalem Bible in the revised version, substitute the word Egypt because they just figure that's what Ezekiel meant. However, I believe the term, the Assyrian there, can stand in the context.

Because in verse 2 he says, speaking to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, he says, Whom art thou like in thy greatness? And verse 3 would give the answer to that question. Who is Pharaoh like? Well, Pharaoh is sort of like the Assyrians. The Assyrians were once great, like Egypt.

See, that's what I think it's doing. So, I don't see any reason to change the word Assyrian there in verse 3, because the question is asked, Who is Pharaoh like? Well, Pharaoh is like the Assyrian. Well, what do we know about the Assyrian? The Assyrian was like a great tree, with great branches spread out.

In other words, a tremendous, a prosperous nation, a powerful nation. But he goes on to show that the tree was cut down. And so, Egypt also, as a great tree with spreading branches like Assyria, can expect to be cut down too.

And that's mainly how this prophecy proceeds. By the way, you might recall, well, I guess we haven't studied it yet in this class, but in Daniel chapter 4, which we'll study next week, the king of Babylon had a dream about a tree that was cut down. And many of the figures of this prophecy are in that dream.

The fowls of the heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young. So it says here in verse 6, it is also said of the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, in Daniel chapter 4, however, Nebuchadnezzar himself was the tree.

So you can see how the king of Babylon was considered a tree. The king of Assyria was here called like a tree. You might remember also Jesus used the same language in Matthew 13 in talking about the kingdom of God.

He said in Matthew 13, the kingdom of God is like mustard seed, which is indeed the smallest of all seeds. But when it is planted and grows up, it becomes the greatest of trees, and the birds lodge in its branches, which is the same thing said of the tree that was Babylon, and the tree that was the Assyrian. In other words, like other great nations, the kingdom of God will grow into a great nation.

Using the image of a tree was spreading branches and creatures finding refuge there in it. Well, I have nothing more to say about that chapter. Let's go on to chapter 32 real quickly here.

It came to pass in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, the first day of the month. This would be March of 585 B.C., a couple of years later than the previous prophecies. It is mainly a lament for Pharaoh.

We need not read it all. In fact, we need not read any of it. It is just a lament like many other laments.

It goes up through verse 16, lamenting him because of his inevitable fall. Then the final prophecy against Egypt, the seventh, is in verses 17-32, the last half of chapter 32. The main thought of this is that Egypt is to join other nations that have already fallen in the grave.

It sort of personifies Egypt and the other nations and talks about how to go down to the grave. All these other nations that fell before him will say, Oh, you are here too. Sort of similar to what Isaiah prophesied against Lucifer and the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14.

He says, Oh, all those that have gone down to the grave before you, say, Oh, have you become like one of us? You are just weak like others, huh? So that is the nature of that particular prophecy. There is one other thing I need to make comment on. We are going to skip over 33 and 34 because they will belong... We have already covered 33 because it only takes up parts of other chapters.

34 we will talk about in tomorrow's talks. And in 35 we need not read it because it adds nothing to what we have already read elsewhere. It is another prophecy against Edom, basically prophesying its destruction.

We have already read all those details before. We need not cover them again. But in the midst of our prophecies about Egypt, I want to make this one comment.

There is a difficulty in identifying the fulfillment of a particular statement in Ezekiel 29. In Ezekiel 29, verses 12 through 14, and even though we have run out of time, I feel like I should make a comment about this. I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate.

And her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years. And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and I will disperse them through the countries. Yet thus saith the Lord God, at the end of forty years I will gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered, and I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation, and they shall there be a base nation.

And it goes on in verse 15, it shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations, and I will diminish them, they shall no more rule over the nations. The reason I bring up this point is because of the forty years that are mentioned. The fulfillment of this is difficult to identify, and different commentators have taken a stab at it.

They've identified the forty years with different segments in Egypt's history where they suffered judgment. However, there has been no literal fulfillment of this. That is to say that the land was emptied of its inhabitants, like for instance Jerusalem was when the Babylonians took them out to Babylon for seventy years.

Jerusalem was literally emptied. Egypt, it says, the language is very similar to what is prophesied of Judah, however it has not literally been fulfilled. It was not emptied.

The people of Egypt never were all deported to Babylon. However, I'm sure many of them were when Babylon conquered Egypt. And the forty years, many commentators don't know what to do with it because they don't know what forty years is spoken of here.

It seems because the language of verses 12 through 14 is very much like the language of destruction prophesied against Judah in earlier parts of Ezekiel. It talks about the desolation of it and all the waste shall be, the cities will be laid waste and all. That it may be an attempt on the part of Ezekiel to compare the judgment of Egypt with the judgment upon Judah.

Judah literally went away for seventy years as a whole nation. Egypt didn't experience quite as devastating a judgment although they were defeated by Babylon. Some of them did go into captivity of course and therefore when it talks about them being, their inhabitants taken away and so forth, that could refer to just a significant portion of their inhabitants rather than all, rather than literal.

But again the forty years is not identified easily with any known forty year period. It is possible that it is a symbolic number since Ezekiel does a lot with symbols. And forty is in the scripture a number of judgments.

In the flood it rained forty days and forty nights. When the Jews rebelled against God's command to go into the Promised Land, he gave them forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Jesus afflicted himself with fasting for forty days and forty nights when he fasted which is sort of a self-discipline, a self-judgment that he put himself under at the beginning of his ministry.

But the point here is the number of forty often has the number of judgment. Furthermore, it might be pointed out that the Jews had been captive in Egypt itself for four hundred years, roughly. And it may be saying that the forty corresponds with the four hundred only it's a lot shorter.

Egypt is going to experience punishment a little bit like what they inflicted on the Jews. But it will be a shorter period of time but still there is a connection seen by Ezekiel at least in the thought of Egypt's suffering judgment as they had inflicted punishment upon the Jews in the sense that there was a forty year which might correspond to a portion of the four hundred years. But this is a difficult passage.

I don't claim to have any clear answers on this point and no one seems to either. Now I might just say this too. Someday we may know more about the history of Egypt.

There might be something archaeologists will turn up someday that will show that there was a period of time unknown previously to us that the Egyptians actually were, for the most part, taken into captivity for forty years and then returned. We don't know everything there is to know. But I'm saying at this point we don't know what the actual fulfillment of this was.

If it is intended as a literal forty year period we don't know what forty years is in mind. There were different judgments that came upon Egypt. Some of them lasted, as some commentators have pointed out, about forty years and may have been the ones referred to.

But it was not exactly as described here. But one thing that is interesting is the last prophecy about it in this section is that Egypt would be a base kingdom like the basis of the lowest or the most least influential kingdom will never be significant again. That certainly has taken place and that required prophetic insight on the part of Ezekiel.

Which means that if he could see that then we have no reason to doubt that he saw accurately whatever it is he is describing earlier either. But Egypt was once one of the ruling kingdoms of the world. And even in Ezekiel's day and Isaiah's day Egypt was just about the only kingdom comparable with Assyria.

That the Jews could go to Egypt to seek help against Assyria because they were a major nation. But as you know, in recent history, for the past couple thousand years, Egypt has not been a major nation. They are not one of the leading nations of the world anymore.

They have always been something of a second or third. Unfortunately, the last few minutes of this lecture were not recorded.