In my ongoing reading of Ezekiel along with Robert Jenson’s Brazos Commentary, I came to the amazing poem in Ezekiel 27:1-36. This text is a lament over the fall of Tyre, a pagan port and trading city on an island. The poem pictures Tyre as a splendid ship:
They made all your planks
of fir trees from Senir;
they took a cedar from Lebanon
to make a mast for you.
From oaks of Bashan
they made your oars;
they made your deck of pines
from the coasts of Cyprus,
inlaid with ivory.
Of fine embroidered linen from Egypt
was your sail,
serving as your ensign;
blue and purple from the coasts of Elishah
was your awning.
The texts lists every sort of valuable good traded with Tyre by surrounding nations, including Israel:
silver, iron, tin, and lead . . . human beings and vessels of bronze . . .horses, war-horses, and mules . . . ivory tusks and ebony . . . turquoise, purple, embroidered work, fine linen, coral, and rubies . . . wheat . . . millet,honey, oil, and balm . . .wine of Helbon, and white wool . . . wrought iron, cassia . . .saddlecloths for riding . . . lambs, rams, and goats . . . all kinds of spices, and all precious stones, and gold . . . choice garments, . . . clothes of blue and embroidered work, and . . .carpets of coloured material, bound with cords and made secure. . . .
Notwithstanding its prosperity, Tyre ultimately is set up for judgment and ruin:
Your riches, your wares, your merchandise,
your mariners and your pilots,
your caulkers, your dealers in merchandise,
and all your warriors within you,
with all the company
that is with you,
sink into the heart of the seas
on the day of your ruin.
It’s tempting to suggest Tyre is judged because of its luxuries, but the text doesn’t exactly say so. In fact, in his commentary, Jenson suggests that God regrets that Tyre must face judgment:
In our text, God regards humanity’s natural achievements with admiration, but he does so within a context of sorrow for their failure, a failure that is measured by the supernatural demands and promises made to his own people. This suggests, for one thing, that the gift of natural goods to all humanity is not finally independent of the gifts made in history to God’s people: the story of the Lord’s conflicts with and benefits to his people encompasses the stories of the Lord with the Gentile nations — how that is to be worked metaphysically currently divides the theologians. And it further suggests that that the Lord’s supernatural regard to natural gifts is always at once affirming and mournful.
Jenson Commentary, 217. Jenson’s comment puts the lament of the fall of “Babylon the Great” in Revelation 18 — clearly, I think, an echo of this text from Ezekiel — into a somewhat new light for me. Revelation 18:11 contains a similar list of luxury cargo:
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.
Perhaps here, too, God regrets the destruction of these cultural artifacts, although I think both here and in Ezekiel the inclusion of human beings / slaves suggests part of how the culture became corrupt. Yet in Revelation 21, we see the New Jerusalem, a city built of gold and jewels, to which the “kings of the Earth” bring their glory (Rev. 21:24), suggesting that the finest things of culture are not finally destroyed after all.