11Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me: 12“Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:
“You were the signet of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering,
sardius, topaz, and diamond,
beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;
and crafted in gold were your settings
and your engravings.
On the day that you were created
they were prepared.
14You were an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
15You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created,
till unrighteousness was found in you.
16In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground;
I exposed you before kings,
to feast their eyes on you.
18By the multitude of your iniquities,
in the unrighteousness of your trade
you profaned your sanctuaries;
so I brought fire out from your midst;
it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth
in the sight of all who saw you.
19All who know you among the peoples
are appalled at you;
you have come to a dreadful end
and shall be no more forever.”
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Here is a passage remarkable in its implications. It is a lament for the king of Tyre; but the extraordinary thing is that there are so many echoes in it of other things, particularly the reference to the Garden of Eden. It is obvious, surely, that Ezekiel has Genesis 3 in mind, and some old commentators have seemed to see here a picture of a dark and sinister figure, the power of evil itself, Satan, adumbrated in what the prophet says. One commentator thinks that there is a mythological legend that Ezekiel has taken and made use of, and incorporated into his prophecy, the story of a fall of supernatural beings. What are we to make of this? Well, there is a similar passage in Isaiah 14:12ff, where that prophet speaks of Babylon, significantly enough in a section of his prophecy in which, like Ezekiel, he lists a series of judgments against surrounding nations. Isaiah's reference is to the king of Babylon, yet he calls him 'Lucifer, son of the morning', and one senses there, as here, the sinister overtones and suggestion of a deeper dimension than the merely human. It will not do to dismiss this in a cavalier fashion, as some commentators tend to do, by saying that there is no reference to any other than to the king of Tyre. Why should his fall be described in terms that plainly reflect the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, if there is no connection between the two? In fact, the fall of the king of Tyre symbolises the tragedy of humanity, fallen through pride; and Ezekiel is seeing in this man, in all his pride, arrogance and godlessness, and in his crashing down to ruin, a reflection of mankind's story. We will continue a consideration of this in the next Note.