The Oracles Against the Nations

After the judgment of Jerusalem, the book gathers the oracles against the nations. This collection is grouped by theme, not by date: some precede the fall of the city, others follow it. The opening chapter targets four immediate neighbours, condemned for one same motive: they scorned Israel in its misfortune. Ammon rejoiced at the ruin of Jerusalem, the sanctuary profaned, the land laid waste, Judah led into captivity; Moab denied that Israel was different from the other peoples; Edom took cruel revenge on Judah; the Philistines struck with an old contempt: “Because you said: Aha! Aha! over my sanctuary when it was profaned.” Ezekiel 25:3 God judges these nations because they trampled a people already brought low.

Tyre, the merchant city

The longest of the oracles targets Tyre, the great merchant city, rich from its trade on every sea. Ezekiel describes it as a magnificent ship, laden with treasures, that the storm will engulf. Its fault is its self-sufficiency: sure of its wealth, it believed itself impregnable and rejoiced to see Jerusalem, its commercial rival, fall. God announces that it will be razed. The oracle is fulfilled by stages: Nebuchadnezzar besieges Tyre thirteen years and his army wears itself out, but the city, built on an island, resists, and he draws no spoil from it. God then announces that he will give him Egypt: the plunder of that land will at last pay the army for the effort left without gain before Tyre. The city itself will finally be razed by Alexander the Great, two and a half centuries later.

The king of Tyre, figure of Satan

At the heart of the oracle, God addresses the king of Tyre, and his word then surpasses the man it targets. The prince had called himself a god: “Your heart has grown proud, and you have said: I am a god, I sit on a god’s throne, though you are a man and not a god.” Ezekiel 28:2 Then the oracle rises higher and describes a being placed in Eden, in the garden of God, perfect in beauty and in wisdom, until pride undoes him: “You were perfect in your ways from the day of your creation, until iniquity was found in you.” Ezekiel 28:15 These words surpass any human king: tradition recognises in them Satan, the angel filled with perfection who rose against God and was cast down. The king of Tyre, who makes himself a god, is the image of it on earth: every being that wants to take the place of God retraces the fall of the first proud one.

Sidon and Egypt

Then comes Sidon, the neighbour of Tyre, against whom God announces plague and sword, blood in its streets, that through this judgment men may know who he is. Then the oracle unfolds at length against Egypt, the great power on which Israel was so often tempted to lean rather than on God. Pharaoh is painted there as the great crocodile lying in the midst of his rivers, calling himself master of the Nile that he claims to have made himself: “Behold, I come against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great crocodile.” Ezekiel 29:3 Egypt is then compared to a superb cedar, higher than all the trees, which God fells for its pride; and the oracle ends with a lamentation in which Pharaoh goes down to the abode of the dead, to join the nations fallen before him. The fulfilment follows: Nebuchadnezzar invades Egypt and ravages it; its power is broken.