From *The Skeptical Review*, 1999 / March-April. [This is the first of seven posts dealing with alleged biblical prophecies. The remaining six will immediately follow this one]:
by Farrell Till
The claim that Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre in Ezekiel 26 was fulfilled with amazing accuracy has been thoroughly refuted, yet uninformed biblicists keep repeating it. In the article in Reason and Revelation, which executive editor Dr. Bert Thompson refused to let me reprint in TSR (see "From the Mailbag," p. 12, this issue), Brad Bromling listed six details that Ezekiel prophesied about Tyre and then said, "Each of these items came to pass exactly as Ezekiel said" (December 1994, p. 96). In the preceding issue of TSR, I published an article by Bruce Weston in which he described some of the struggles he is experiencing as he makes the transition from Bible believer to skeptic. One of those struggles concerned prophecy fulfillment and in particular Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre, so even though I have already discussed this prophecy in earlier issues of TSR, I am going to review it to show the absurdity of trying to pawn this off as an example of remarkable prophecy fulfillment. Although Apologetics Press would not permit me to reprint Bromling's article, copyright laws don't prohibit quoting it, so I will have to rely on this method to show how wrong Bromling was in his claim that Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre was fulfilled.
Weston expressed doubt that Ezekiel had intended to prophesy that Tyre would be destroyed and left desolate by Nebuchadnezzar, because "God has Ezekiel saying that He would bring many nations against them as the waves of the sea" (Vol. 10, Num. 1, p. 6), and Bromling stated the same position. The second of the "six specific predictions" that Bromling listed in his article was that "(m)any nations would come against Tyre (v:3)." Before addressing the claim that Ezekiel predicted that Tyre would be destroyed by "many nations," we should look at the reference to these nations in its context.
In the eleventh year, on the first day of the month, the word of Yahweh came to me: Mortal, because Tyre said concerning Jerusalem, "Aha, broken is the gateway of the peoples; it has swung open to me; I shall be replenished, now that it is wasted." Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD: See, I am against you, O Tyre! I will hurl many nations against you, as the sea hurls its waves. They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down its towers. I will scrape its soil from it and make it a bare rock. It shall become, in the midst of the sea, a place for spreading nets. I have spoken, says the Lord GOD. It shall become plunder for the nations, and its daughter-towns in the country shall be killed by the sword. Then they shall know that I am Yahweh. For thus says the Lord GOD: I will bring against Tyre from the north King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, king of kings, together with horses, chariots, cavalry, and a great and powerful army. Your daughter-towns in the country he shall put to the sword. He shall set up a siege wall against you, cast up a ramp against you, and raise a roof of shields against you. He shall direct the shock of his battering rams against your walls and break down your towers with his axes. His horses shall be so many that their dust shall cover you. At the noise of cavalry, wheels, and chariots your very walls shall shake, when he enters your gates like those entering a breached city. With the hoofs of his horses he shall trample all your streets. He shall put your people to the sword, and your strong pillars shall fall to the ground. They will plunder your riches and loot your merchandise; they shall break down your walls and destroy your fine houses. Your stones and timber and soil they shall cast into the water. I will silence the music of your songs; the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more. I will make you a bare rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets. You shall never again be rebuilt, for I Yahweh have spoken, says the Lord GOD (Ezek. 26:1-14, NRSV with Yahweh substituted for the LORD).
Bromling depicted the "exact" fulfillment of this prophecy as a series of events that happened over a period of almost 1900 years.
Within a few years of Ezekiel's oracle, Nebuchadnezzar besieged the mainland city (586 B. C.). When he finally defeated Tyre 13 years later, the city was deserted--most of the inhabitants had already moved to the island. Things remained that way for about 241 years. Then in 332 B. C., Alexander the Great took the island city for Greece. This was accomplished by scraping clean the mainland city of its debris, and using those materials to build a land-bridge to the island. Although Alexander brought much damage to the city, it still stood. Tyre persisted for the next 1,600 years. Finally, in A. D. 1291, the Muslims thoroughly crushed Tyre, and the city has remained in ruins ever since. Aside from a small fishing community, nothing is left.
There are so many distortions and misrepresentations in this short paragraph that I hardly know where to begin replying to them, but at least two important counterpoints must be made: (1) Nebuchadnezzar didn't finally defeat Tyre as Bromling claimed. Tyre was a stronghold on an off-shore island, and Nebuchadnezzar's 13-year siege (587-574 B. C.) against it failed, as even general encyclopedias will inform those who bother to check. Nebuchadnezzar succeeded only in capturing the mainland suburb, which was known as Ushu, but that certainly didn't require 13 years. The mainland area was taken without difficulty, and then the unsuccessful siege was directed against Tyre proper, which was the island stronghold. Nebuchadnezzar finally withdrew his forces after securing a Tyrian agreement to pay annual tribute to Babylon, but he did not capture the city much less destroy it permanently, as Ezekiel predicted he would. (2) Bromling also erred in saying that Tyre has remained in ruins ever since the Muslim conquest of 1291. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Vol. 4, p. 721) has an aerial photograph of modern Tyre, which shows the former island part covered by a town that is much more than just the "small fishing village" that Bromling described above. Also, the town is obviously much more than a "bare rock," where fishing nets are spread, which Ezekiel predicted it would forever be (v:14). What the photograph shows agrees with Harper's Bible Dictionary, which claims that an "important deep sounding in the 1970s" showed that "(t)he city has been almost continuously occupied from the third millennium B. C. until the present, except for a major gap from 2000 to 1600 B. C." (1985, pp. 1101-1102).
Biblical inerrantists have resorted to all sorts of verbal gymnastics to try to explain how that Ezekiel's prophecy could have been fulfilled if the site of ancient Tyre is still occupied by a city. They say such things as it never regained its former splendor, but the prophecy didn't predict this: it said that the city would never be rebuilt. Some inerrantists even say that present-day Tyre is not built on the same site, but a look at modern maps of Lebanon will show (as does the aerial photo mentioned above) that Sur [the modern name] is located on the very site of the former island. It just isn't so that each of the items in this prophecy "came to pass exactly as Ezekiel said." He predicted that the city would be destroyed and never built again, but a city is there now on the same spot that Ezekiel said would be a bare rock forever.
That brings us to the matter of the "many nations" that Ezekiel said would be involved in the destruction of Tyre. The literary organization of the prophecy (quoted above) seems rather simple. It began with an introductory statement of what Yahweh intended to do to Tyre. He said that he would (1) cause "many nations" to come against it, (2) destroy its walls, (3) break down its towers, (4) scrape the dust from it and make it like a bare rock, and (5) slay its "daughter villages" in the field. After describing in general terms what he was going to do to Tyre, Yahweh then proceeded to state the specifics of how this would be done: "For thus says the Lord GOD: I will bring against Tyre from the north King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon...." It seems rather clear, then, that Yahweh was saying that Nebuchadnezzar would be the instrument that he would use to destroy Tyre as promised in the introductory statement, so he proceeded to state the specifics of what Nebuchadnezzar would do to Tyre. He would put Tyre's daughter-towns in the country [the mainland villages] to the sword, he would set up a siege wall, he would cast up a ramp, etc., etc., etc. The prophecy listed a dozen specific military actions that "he" would direct against Tyre, and the only reasonable antecedent of the pronoun he is Nebuchadnezzar.
So if Ezekiel was declaring that Nebuchadnezzar would be the instrument that Yahweh would use to destroy Tyre, why did he say that "many nations" would be sent against it? A reasonable explanation of the prophet's reference to "many-nations" can be found in the ethnic compositions of early empires. Empires like Babylonia formed from the conquest and annexation of surrounding tribes and nations, so when an area was assimilated into an adjoining kingdom, the soldiers of the conquered nations served the greater empire. The Assyrian empire, for example, crumbled when the combined forces of the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians plundered Assur in 614 B. C. and Nineveh in 612. When Haran fell to these allied forces in 610 and then Carchemish in 605, most of the Assyrian territory was annexed by Babylon. In such cases, defeated armies swore allegiance to their conquerers, so the armies of a king like Nebuchadnezzar were actually armies of "many nations."
Literally, then, when the armies of Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus or Alexander attacked a city or territory, it wasn't just the aggression of a single nation but of many nations. This reality of ancient warfare was reflected in a familiar scenario in the Old Testament in which biblical prophets and writers depicted battles against common enemies as the gathering of "many nations." In 2 Chronicles 20:1-4, this allegedly happened when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah.
It happened after this that the people of Moab with the people of Ammon, and others with them besides the Ammonites, came to battle against Jehoshaphat. Then some came and told Jehoshaphat, saying, "A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea, from Syria, and they are in Hazazon Tamar."
Psalm 2:1-2 depicted the "kings of the earth" as having set themselves against Yahweh and his anointed. Isaiah 13:4 told of a "tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations" that were gathered together against Yahweh of hosts. Zechariah 12:3 warned that "all nations of the earth" that were gathered together against Jerusalem would be cut in pieces. Ezekiel himself clearly used this same scenario at times. In the allegory of the two sisters (Oholah and Oholibah), he warned Judah that Yahweh would send against it the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians. The "many-nations" scenario was a commonplace hyperbolic device that biblical prophets used in their vitriolic denunciations of those who were enemies of Israel and Judah. This device was even used to denounce Judean kings who "did evil in the sight of Yahweh." After Nebuchadnezzar had installed a puppet king in Jerusalem and by a strange twist of thinking had come to be considered by some biblical writers as God's servant, Jehoiakim (the puppet) rebelled, and "Yahweh sent against him bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites to destroy Judah" (2 Kings 24:1-3), but the last two chapters of this book make it very clear that it was Nebuchadnezzar's army that destroyed Judah and took the people captive to Babylon, but in a real sense it was actually a conquest of "many nations," because Nebuchadnezzar's armies were comprised of more than just Babylonians.
When inerrantists today look at Ezekiel's prophecy through the glasses of historical records, they can clearly see that it was not fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar, and so they must look for some way to explain away the failure. Ezekiel's reference to "many nations" is a straw that some inerrantists like Brad Bromling have grabbed to try to salvage the prophecy, and so they have tried to make the prophecy mean that a series of attacks by many different nations spread out over 1900 years would result in the eventual destruction but that Ezekiel never meant that the total desolation of Tyre would be caused by Nebuchadnezzar. However, the literary organization of the prophetic passage (which I analyzed above) and the facts just noted about the multi-national composition of ancient armies like Nebuchadnezzar's make this "explanation" questionable to say the least. It is more likely that Ezekiel meant that "many nations" under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar would bring about the total destruction of Tyre.
A stubborn fact that inerrantists choose to overlook is that Ezekiel more or less apologized later in his book for having erred in predicting that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre. This passage clearly shows that Ezekiel meant that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the island stronghold and not just the mainland suburban area as Bromling has tried to distort the prophecy into meaning.
In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre; every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare; yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had expended against it. Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: I will give the land of Egypt to King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his payment for which he labored, because they worked for me, says the Lord GOD (Ezek. 29:17-20).
The prophecy against Tyre in chapter 26 was dated in the "eleventh year" and this one in the "twenty-seventh year," so the one immediately above was made after the other one. Notice that Ezekiel said in the first italicized statement above that "neither [Nebuchadnezzar] nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had expended against it," but if Bromling is right in his claim that Yahweh had intended for Nebuchadnezzar to defeat only the mainland area, then it would not be true that he had received no pay for the labor he expended. In reality, he would have gotten exactly what Yahweh had wanted him to have... the mainland villages of Tyre. Obviously, then, Ezekiel was saying here that the original prophecy had failed to materialize because Nebuchadnezzar did not accomplish what the prophecy had promised, and so Yahweh was going to give him the land of Egypt "as his payment for which he labored." In typical biblical vitriol, the next chapter launches into a prophetic tirade against Egypt, which would presumably suffer the same sort of devastation from Nebuchadnezzar that Ezekiel had earlier predicted for Tyre. This prophecy also failed, but that's material for another article, some of which is discussed on the front page of this issue.
In his zeal to praise the Bible where praise is not warranted, Bromling concluded his article by asking, "How can we account for Ezekiel's precision regarding the history of this city?" Well, that's an easy question to answer. There was no "precision" in Ezekiel's prophecy about Tyre. It failed in various points, but Bromling's blind allegiance to biblical fundamentalism will never allow him to admit it. He went on to ask, "How could [Ezekiel] look almost 1,900 years into the future and predict that Tyre would be a bald rock where fishermen would spread their nets?" But as my reference to the aerial photograph of modern Tyre explained, this site is not a bald rock. The major part of the former island is occupied by a town, and even if this town were the insignificant fishing village that Bromling has tried to make it, that would just be another point of prophecy failure, because Ezekiel said that Tyre would be destroyed and "never more have any being"(26:14, 21; 27:36; 28:36). Bromling and other biblicists may see the hand of God in this, but I see desperation in their attempts to find the hand of God in an ancient prophecy that obviously failed.
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