The Bible predicted what would happen to Tyre

If you take the books of the Bible and categorize them, a large section of the Bible comes under the category of “The Prophets”. These were faithful men who had God’s words put in their mouths so that they would speak to the people all that He commanded them (Deuteronomy 18:18). Some of what they said foretold things that would happen in the future. It is interesting to take some of these passages and compare them to what actually happened.

The first passage I will look at is from the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a prophet to the Jewish people after they had been taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar and exiled to Babylon (597 BC). In this case he was speaking about the city of Tyre, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Phoenicia.

The Phoenicians were merchantmen who sailed their ships all over the then known world to find treasures and bring them back to trade. They are most well-known for a purple dye they made from a certain type of shellfish. During the time of King Solomon, the king of Tyre’s servants worked closely with Solomon’s servants to bring to Israel all kinds of riches and supplies to build the Temple and Solomon’s palace.

However, Ezekiel told of Tyre’s doom.

They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets.

Ezekiel 26:4,5 ESV

A few years after Ezekiel spoke these words, Nebuchadnezzar came against Tyre and after a seige of thirteen years, destroyed the city (593 BC). However, many of the city’s inhabitants fled to a nearby island and were able to revive their city there. Tyre flourished until the time of Alexander the Great.

Alexander attacked the city of Tyre in 332 BC, and used debris from the old city of Tyre on the mainland to build a causeway out to the island, scraping the old city bare and casting it into the sea. Today, it is a small fishing village and the fishermen spread their nets on the rocks to dry.

Photo: © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons