This commentary is a little lengthy but teaches a vital lesson for us today; is America beyond destruction and are we Christians secure within the “hedge” (Job 1:10) that God has around us?
The city of Tyre was on an island
a short distance from the mainland of Lebanon. The “hedge” around Tyre was both
rockiness and the sea itself. Since its origin, none had ever penetrated it because
it was naturally fortified.
The Bible, to be Truth, must be
accurate. One of the most obvious “inaccuracies,” it seems, is God’s prophecy
to Ezekiel that the city of Tyre (Tyrus) would be destroyed by king Nebuchadnezzar
II (Ezek 26). The king did attack, but the destruction enumerated by God to Ezkiel
did not happen. Nebuchadnezzar’s armies did attack and lay siege to Tyre from 586
to 573 B.C., but they did not utterly destroy that fortification as God revealed
it to Ezekiel. Had God erred? We shall see!
Tyre was an island city cut off
from the mainland of Lebanon. It was a fortification that not one nation had ever
penetrated. That God would tell Ezekiel that Tyre would be destroyed was
laughable because it was impregnable.
God specifically said that
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would destroy Tyre, but it did not happen. Tyre still
existed after Nebuchanezzar was long gone. That made God out to be either a
liar or weak. When Tyre remained fortified, that diminished the LORD GOD as it seemed
that even He was unable to destroy Tyre.
Imagine how arrogant the people
of Tyre became after Babylonia failed the mission of God. Their own god, Melqart,
had kept them safe from destruction. To them Melqart was stronger than Yahweh.
Melqart was the Lebanese version of Hercules whose strength was believed to
even hold up the world. When God was down, Hercules in Melqart was still
standing. Could God defeat Hercules? His plan was to use Nebuchadnezzar to build
an access to the island and break down the walls of Tyre.
The people of Tyre expected Nebuchadnezzar.
The LORD GOD of the Hebrews had never been wrong, so they prepared and fended
off Nebuchadnezzar.
What if God had not spoken to Ezekiel
who then issued a warning to “Tyrus”? Then Tyrus would not have prepared. They
already thought of themselves as invincible but were cautious because they were
warned. Ezekiel had credibility because of the accuracies of his predictions.
Was God wrong or was He
pragmatic? Why did Tyre prepare so well to fend off the powerful Babylonians?
It was no accident. If they had not been vigilant, they would have been destroyed.
Did God cunningly outwit, outlast, and outplay Nebuchadnezzar to save Tyre;
Tyre whose leader, Hiram, had been an ally of King David?
Indeed, Tyre was a sinful city,
having a pantheon of gods of which Melqart (Hercules) was the titular god. Tyre
deserved to be destroyed because of their blasphemy.
According to legend, Tyre was
founded circa 2750 BC by Melqart as a favor to the mermaid Tyros.
God was not only speaking about
defeating the people of Tyre, but Hercules and Tyros herself. Defeating them then
would have been less daunting, but God seemed to have chosen to defeat Melqart
and Tyros in His own time.
God outwitted Tyre by delaying His
plan. The siege ended concurrently with the change in leadership from Ithobaal
III (meaning “with Baal”) to Baal II. Was that only coincidental or a delay?
Would God still do as He said He would?
Note that generals, especially in
ancient times, did not win wars alone. They won by the auspices of their god. Wars
proved whose god was the stronger.
It seemed to the world and to
Nebuchadnezzar that Melqart was stronger than Yahweh or even himself. He was a self-proclaimed
God (later) but at that time Marduk was the god of the Babylonians. Perhaps
Nebuchadnezzar made himself a god because Marduk could not defeat Tyre!
Marduk was the god of creation,
and Nebuchadnezzar even resembled Marduk as ancient statues reveal. Nebuchadnezzar
may have even seen himself as Marduk. Tyre humbled him when Hercules proved
stronger than his god. As it turned out, the nobody god, Hercules (Melqart), weakened
Nebuchadnezzar and God humbled him. Nebuchadnezzar ate grass as an ox (Dan 4:25).
So, Nebuchadnezzar, as the god of
the Babylonian Empire, was defeated when he saw the son of God (Jesus) in the
fiery furnace. His failure in Tyre had weakened his self-esteem, so Nebuchadnezzar
demanded that the people worship him — the same king who had failed to defeat
Tyre.
So, rather than diminish Tyre,
perhaps God’s priority was to diminish Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar. If he had
not been defeated in the attempt to capture Tyre, then Marduk would proven to
be stronger than either Melqart or Yahweh. Marduk was the Babylonian creator
God — their version of Yahweh. Marduk was an image of God, not the real Thing.
“To everything there is a season
(a time), and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecc 3:1). Time is a
construct for man, but God is the setter and author of time. It is His to do
with as He pleases. He set the time for Nebuchaddnezzare; it would be done on
his watch. The clock slowed down remarkably for Nebuchadnezzar.
This brings up the concept of
free will. Time is the order of God’s Will. He can set the time and change
the time.
However, mankind, made in His
Image, also has free will. God does not make mankind do anything; not even obey
Him. Nebuchadnezzar was not a robot king. Because God knew what Nebuchadnezzar
would do — attack Tyre — did not mean that he would win the battle.
However, Nebuchadnezzar set the
clock for the destruction of Tyre. God uses unrighteous people for His
initiatives. God could have destroyed Tyre His Way by natural causes or miraculous
powers, but His desire was for man to destroy what his own hands had made. In
this case Nebuchadnezzar failed to destroy what Ithobaal III had made.
There are several places in scripture
wherein God “repented” of what He had done (e.g., 1 Sam 15:35), “The Lord
repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.” He had not erred but changed
His Mind. God is sovereign and He alone can change the events of time! Just as
God was sorry that He had appointed Saul, He was also sorry that He had given
that tough assignment to Nebuchadnezzar. God never errs!
In the process of time, the city of Tyre (Tyrus) was destroyed exactly as God revealed to Ezekiel. The only change was the time and hand by which it was destroyed. The time would not be the interval of 586–573 BC — Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, but 332 BC after a seven-month siege. God revealed that event to Ezekiel:
For thus says the Lord God; “Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and many people. He shall slay with the sword your daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against you, and cast a mount against you, and lift up the buckler against you. And he shall set engines of war against your walls, and with his axes he shall break down the towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: your walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into your gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach” (Ezek 26:7-10)
Alexander the Great did just
that! His army built a long earthen and rock bridge to the island city and
breached not only its walls, but the entire island. Alexander defeated Tyrus
just as God had appointed Nebuchadnezzar who failed his task. For the first
time in history, the impossible was done, but by Alexander from “the north” not
Nebuchadnezzar from the east!
Now examine time itself in modern
terms. Nebuchadnezzar was the “root cause” — the fundamental event that causes
a reaction. Nebuchadnezzar, as king of Babylon, was the fundamental event. His
reign caused much turbulence in the middle east. Because of his cruel reign and
humiliation, Persia, under Cyrus the Great, defeated Babylon, and then
Alexander defeated the armies of Persia. There was a chain reaction. Nebuchadnezzar
was not the direct cause, but the root cause.
Compare that to a chain reaction.
I could use about any chemical process but rather consider a traffic jam. All the
traffic stops when one car stops suddenly, and perhaps it even impacts the one before
it; the one that braked suddenly.
Did the event occur because the
driver of the front car braked? Indeed, that driver was the direct
cause. What was the root cause? Some driver much earlier slowed for some
reason, perhaps to gawk at something. When that driver slowed, all the cars
behind that one driver slowed as well with each successive driver more abruptly.
The car that slammed on the brakes that directly caused the collision was just
reacting to all those before him. The root cause was long before, perhaps a
hundred cars before; however, the car that applied the brakes last would be
held liable. The law makes no attempt to look at videos of traffic movement to
determine who first slowed down.
God is fairer; He did not give
Alexander the Great the glory. He looked upstream in time and events and provided
Ezekiel with the root cause of Tyre’s destruction. Nebuchadnezzar paved the way
for Alexander. He attacked Tyre and failed. That convinced the city that they
were impregnable. Indeed, Tyre was attacked from the east, surely by both
nations — the Babylonians and then the Greeks. However, Babylon came
from the east and the Greeks from the north (Macedonia). God knew all along
that Alexander would be the direct cause and Nebuchadnezzar the root cause down
to the point that He told Ezekiel the attack would come from the north.
Why did God not just say that
Alexander would defeat Tyre? Ezekiel, nor anybody else, would have known of
whom God was speaking. Substitute “Alexander” in the immediate passages above; “I
will bring upon Tyrus Alexander….”
That would mean nothing to Ezekiel or anyone else, so God provided
Nebuchadnezzar as the root cause.
In a similar recent situation, illegal
immigrants were crossing the borders to the U.S. in California, Texas, Florida,
New Mexico, and Arizona. President Biden made V.P. Harris czar to find the
cause. As czar, she was the assigned authority; she was “king” or president in
that problem/solution analysis. Harris overlooked the direct cause — our laws being
broken — and went to the Northern Triangle countries of Central America. She
went upstream to find the root cause of immigration. Any fool would have
known that traffic stops because some fool(s) long before had gawked at
something, perhaps a policeman with radar.
Any fool should have known that
the root cause of illegal immigration, was the law of several countries in
Central America. Rather than go to the direct cause of illegal immigration —
the U.S.-Mexico border which Biden could fix, she went upstream where it was
impossible to fix.
God, in the same manner, provided
the root cause of the future collapse of Tyre rather than the direct cause —
Alexander. If Nebuchadnezzar had been righteous, Tyre would have failed then.
Nebuchadnezzar is the king that made the People of Tyre think they would
never perish.
In like manner, Adam is the root
cause of our direct problem. He sinned, and one sin became the root cause of
our own sins. Although, we are the direct cause, it is rooted in the woman’s
attempt to “drive” the male Adam where he was told not to go!
In the beginning, the woman was
gawking at the lustrous forbidden tree and possibly the bright angel Lucifer,
within the branches of the tree. She slowed down, looked, and Adam slowed with
her. They both gawked at the fruit of the tree in a short chain reaction. Soon,
Cain was born, and he too gawked. As he wandered the land of Nod, they all
gawked, and the book of the generations of man (Gen 5) is about the chain
reaction. By the time of Noah, all the “traffic” had stopped, and God cleared
the ‘wreck” by removing the “wreckage”from His Way.
When the world collided with God
it was not suddenly. One man was not the direct cause; the root cause was the original
sin which is passed down to all who came after!
We cannot change the outcome
ourselves because the root cause came six thousand years before us. Our works
are lame. Only God can clear the Way because we have no power to change our
genetics from all that came before us. The only way that we can help is for us
to change the paths that we go. We are not to go the way of Satan but take the “bypass”
— the Way of God, so that we need not collide with the inevitable!
When we sin and collide with God
and His other pedestrians, we are the direct cause. We are to have self-control
(2 Tim 1:7), vigilance, and sobriety.(1 Pet 5:8), knowing there will be a “crash”
and for us to avoid the traffic of the world so that we are not one of the many
possible direct causes of the destruction of the world.
God could have placed the blame
on the root cause — man’s encounter with the other kind — that began the final catastrophic
event, but each of us can do our parts to not be there when the world collides
with the heavens.
Just as it is the driver in the
car in front of us to be sober, vigilant, and non-careless to avoid our
collision with him; we must do the same. In fact, none of the drivers in the
chain of traffic are wise to even tap the brakes of their vehicles. Why? Because
all the foolish people down the chain will tap theirs until the last one collides,
and soon many will cause a collision chain.
Satan is the root cause, and in His
time, God will deal with him. For now, however, we are to motivate His Way for
us to avoid our own blame in the Court of God. We know for whom we drive and it
is not the way of the World, so Christians are to move cautiously and bypass
the way of the world, knowing that long before us, one person (Eve) gawked too
long until now all the world gawks at the shiny object, Lucifer, even
unwittingly looking at his things.
Us humans usually look at the
direct cause. We get angry at each other and even kill to avoid stress. We must
not kill each other because the root cause of our stress is our “father the
Devil” (John 8:44). It was the Devil’s fault, but we are part of his genetic chain.
So, the family of Satan is just as responsible as its patriarch for the things
that we do, unless we change “lanes” (our genetics — “born again;” John 3:7).
Nebuchadnezzar started the
mission with Tyre, His role was to make them think they were safe. They thought
so until Alexander came from the north and perished them who believe that they
were so safe that they would never perish.
That is the same perception that
Lucifer provides to Christians; that they will never be in peril because they
have falsely assumed that they are already saved.
Was the city of Tyre saved from
destruction? No, God kept them safe until their time was up, then they perished
because they thought that they were invincible. Do you think that way?
No comments:
Post a Comment