utterly bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, and they shall weep for thee with bitterness of heart, and bitter wailing.

32 And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?

33 When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy merchandise.

34 In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters, thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall.

35 All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee, and their kings shall be sore afraid, they shall be troubled in their countenance.

36 The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more. (D)

CHAP. XXVIII.

THE word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, say unto the prince

CHAP. XXVII.

[against Tyre.

of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God:

3 Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee:

4 With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures:

5 By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches.

6 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God;

7 Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy bright

(D) Farther prophecies against Tyre, and a lamentation for her.—In this chapter the Prophet pursues his subject in the manner of the aucient laments, or funeral songs, in which the mourning women first recounted whatever was great or praiseworthy in the deceased, and then bewailed his fall. Here, the riches, glory, and extensive commerce of Tyre are first enlarged upon her downfall is then described in a beautiful allegory, in which all the maritime and commercial world are represented as grieved and astonished at her fate, and greatly alarmed for their own.

"Besides the view which this chapter gives of the conduct of Providence, and of the truth of prophecy; and besides the example it affords the critic, of a very elegant and highly finished piece of composition, it likewise affords the antiquary a very curious and interesting view of the wealth and commerce of ancient times.— And to the mind that looks for a city that hath foundations, what a picture does the whole present of the mutability and inanity of all earthly things! Almost all the places mentioned, like Tyre, are now no more: they are sunk in the deep waters of oblivion; the east wind hath carried them away."-Dr. J. Smith.

CHAP. XXVIII. Ver. 1. Prince of Tyrusnamely, Ithobel, in whose reign Nebuchadnezzar besieged and took Tyre. In the next verse we have a display of his arrogant pretensions.

Ver. 2, 6. Set thine heart as the heart of Gol.The heart is the seat of understanding; to set his

heart as the heart of God, was to magnify his own wisdom, as divine and unsearchable: see ver. 3&5 Ver. 3. Thou art wiser than Daniel.-This is said ironically, but serves to show that the prophet Daniel had, by this time, established a character for extraordinary and inspired wisdom.

I

じ

Prophecies] slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.

10 Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay

[against Tyre.

thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick: therefore wil! I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

19 All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.

20 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

21 Son of man, set thy face against Zidon, and prophesy against it;

22 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold I am against thee, O Zidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee: and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her.

23 For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

24 And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grieving thorn of all that are round about them, that despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.

25 Thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell in their

Ver 9. Wilt thou yet (or indeed) say, &c. Ver. 10. The death of the uncircumcised-that is, remain unburied. See chap. xxxi. 18; xxxii. 19, &c. Ver. 12. Thou sealest up the sum - Newcome, "Thou (art like) a signet of curious engraving." So the ancient versions. Dr. Boothroyd confidently "No sense (whatever) can be made of the says, present text." Bp. Lowth, however, thought otherwise, and rendered the first clanse, "Thou art the confrmed exemplar of measures." (Lect. xxi.) which we understand as parallel to " thou art the model of perfection." It must be confessed, that these various readings differ but in the corner of a letter, or in the difference between Caph and Beth. This

Ver. 13. Thou hast been in Eden- and hast brought thence all the precious productions of Paradise!

Ver. 14. The anointed cherub that covereth-the ark of God. See Exod. xxv. 18, 21; xxx. 26.

Ver. 14, 16. The stones of fire-are supposed to be the precious glittering stones in the high priest's breastplate, deposited in the most holy place; but we should rather refer to the sapphire pavement. Exod. xxiv. 10, and Note.

Ver. 24. A pricking briar.-See Num. xxxiii. 55; Josh. xxiii. 13,

Prophecies] CHAP. and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.

11 No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty

years.

12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

13 Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered :

14 And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into

CHAP. XXIX.

[against Egypt.

XXIX. the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.

15 It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.

16 And it shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel, which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, when they shall look after them: but they shall know that I am the Lord GOD. (F)

¶ 17 And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

18 Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus:

(F) Ver. 1-16. The Judgment of Pharaoh and of Egypt.-This chapter foretels the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, which took place B. C. 573, seventeen years after the prediction, which was evidently delivered before several of the preceding chapters. The same event we have seen foretold by Jeremiah. (ch. xlvi. 13.)

The chapter opens by charging Pharaoh Hophra (commonly called Apries) with the same pride and profaneness as was in the chapter preceding alleged against the prince of Tyre. He was so confident of the strength of his kingdom, that, according to Herodotus (lib. 2.), he impiously boasted, that neither God nor man was able to dispossess him. Wherefore, the Prophet, addressing him under the image of a crocodile, the "great dragon" of Egypt, tells him that with as much ease as a fisher drags the fish he has hooked, God would drag him and his people into captivity, where their carcasses would fall a prey to wild beasts and ravenous birds. The figure is then dropped, and God denounces judgments against him and his people by subjecting them to the Babylonian yoke till that empire should fall: and

after that pericd, it is declared, that Egypt should always remain the basest of kingdoms; a prophecy which has been hitherto most remarkably fulfilled. It became first subject to the Babylonians, and then successively to the Persians, Macedonians, Romans, and Saracens ; then to the Mamelukes (or slave-usurpers), and after them, to the Ottoman Empire, of which it now forms a province governed by a Turkish Bashaw and 24 Begs, Beys, or chiefs, advanced from among the slaves to the administration of public affairs; the Egyptians being possessed with a superstitious notion that fate has decreed, that slaves must always rule, and the natives be in subjection. "Surely," says the late Editor of Calmet, the country be-lorded by slaves, may be justly considered as "the basest of kingdoms:" Frag. No. lxxxix. And though it was well known, as Mr. Prebend. Townsend has remarked, to have been a favourite project with the late, Emperor Napoleon to raise Egypt again to cousequence; and though at first heaven seemed to favour his design, and his success for a time appeared certain, Providence remarkably interfered to disappoint him, and to protect the credit of the sacred prophecies. (See Towns. O.T. Arr. vol. ii. p. 579.

From the tower of Syene.-Marg. "From Migdol to Syene ;" i. e. from the north to the south of Egypt. So Preb. Lowth, Newcome, &c.

Ver. 13. At the end of forty years-from the defeat of Apries, just mentioned, probably at the settlement of the kingdom by Cyrus. Comp. Isa. xlvi. 26.

Ver. 14. Pathros-according to Bochart, Thebais, or upper Egypt. See Jer. xliv. l.

Ver. 18. Every head was made bald-by the helmet, or by disease. Every shoulder peeled-that is, galled by carrying heavy burdens.

Ver. 22. The opening of the mouth-that is, an opportunity to open thy mouth in the midst of them.