I want to do a series of shorter posts, because the interruptions of a caregiver’s daily duties make it harder to find the time to work on the longer ones. But every time I open my Bible, I find a prophecy being fulfilled, or on the verge of being fulfilled, so if I find anything notable, I will try to share what I find here.
This morning I wandered around in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, waiting for something related to recent events to jump out of the text at me. It can be difficult to determine a future event from a past one, because English has specific tenses, and Hebrew has…well, squishy tenses.
I’m not a Hebrew scholar, so I don’t have any more authority on this than what a search engine can yield, but this is the sum of what I found: in English, “I ate my dinner” relates an event that happened in the past, without any doubt about it. Done, over, finished.
In Hebrew, a verb is either perfect or imperfect, so the event could already be completed (perfect tense) or will be repeated, or it is repeatable, or it is not yet complete (imperfect tense). There’s a whole lot more to learn on this, but I’m not studying Hebrew today, and all I need to understand is that an English translation may conclude that an event is past when in fact the intent of the Hebrew tense may be continuing or future. English Bible translations often differ about whether an event is past or future, and this is why.
Pro tip: The King James Version (KJV) usually gets the tense right.
Then, to the squishiness of tense, add the point of view of the speaker. Prophets experienced their visions or heard the voice of God, and then wrote down what they saw and heard. For them, the future events they observed or heard about were in their past experience. So “I saw” can mean “I saw what is going to happen in the future.”
How can the average English-speaking Bible reader determine which prophesied events are past and which are yet to come? Bible scholars are agreed that many prophecies in the Old Testament have at least two and sometimes three fulfillments. Yikes. Talk about wheels within wheels. Need. More. Clues.
In my old NIV study Bible, the study notes will either tie a prophecy to a known historical fulfillment, or use language like “this may refer to…,” and I take that as a clue that the event has not yet been fulfilled, though the notes are often guesswork and aren’t the last word on the subject by any means.
Another clue in the Scriptural text is any reference to “in that day,” meaning a day in the future, and this is almost always a reference to the end of the Age of Grace just prior to Jesus’ Second Coming and the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom. In other words, to the events of our immediate future on the preMillennial dispensational timeline.
So what about the King of Lebanon? Ezekiel 28 is a prophecy against the King of Tyre. Ancient Tyre was a Phoenician port city built on an island just off the coast of modern Lebanon, and it was famous for being a center of trade.
Note: The Phoenicians founded trade cities all around the Mediterranean and up the western coast of Europe (you can probably detect who founded Venice if you are a linguistics nerd and know that the fricatives /v/ and /f/ are related, and you isolate the consonant sounds in “Venice” to /f/ /n/ /x/, i.e. “Phoenix,” or father of the Phoenicians). Okay, back to Tyre.
Tyre was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II about the same time that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and carried off the Jews into captivity in Babylon (c. 586 B.C.). Tyre had no king during its Babylonian subjugation, so Ezekiel 28 can’t be referring to a king of Tyre during this period. Or during the subsequent Persian empire. By the time Tyre reestablished an independent monarchy, Alexander the Great came along in 332 B.C. to crush it down again. Alexander actually changed the coastline, because he built a land bridge out to the island in order to conquer the city, and to this day it remains a peninsula rather than an island.
There doesn’t appear to be a notable king of Tyre in the past who fits the description in Ezekiel 28, so it seems to refer to a king of Tyre in the future. One clue in the text that this is no ordinary king begins in v.12, where God describes the surpassing beauty and perfection of this king, saying
”12 You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God…14 You were annointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God, you walked among the fiery stones…16 Through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence, and you sinned.” (NIV)
The rest of verse 16 appears in the past tense in the NIV translation, but the KJV translation puts it in the future, so we can logically conclude that the tense being used here is the imperfect, or not yet completed, tense. Thus it is pertinent to modern or future events. We’re getting closer. Here is the KJV using the future tense:
”16 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.” (KJV)
The mountain of God always refers to Mount Zion, also known as Mount Moriah, where Abraham sacrificed the ram in Isaac’s place, and where the first and second Temples were built. It means Jerusalem, the center of God’s inheritance and people Israel, the province of the archangel Michael. Every major kingdom or city-state had its own guardian angel, often referred to as the prince of the kingdom (see Daniel 10:20) and many of these were angels who had rebelled against God.
Yet twice in the beginning of Chapter 28, the king of Tyre is referred to as a man. Angels are not men; they are the first race that God created, and the second was humankind. But angels can enter into and possess the souls of wicked humans, such as Judas Iscariot and, oh yeah, the Antichrist. It seems the king of Tyre is a man who will be possessed by a fallen angel; a man who will ultimately be cast into some fiery rocks and reduced to ashes.
”17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I [will throw] you to earth.” NIV (with imperfect tense)
Well, this sure sounds like someone we’ve heard about before. An angel of great beauty and perfection who will be thrown down to earth? a man into whom the fallen angel Satan enters, and who is destroyed at the Second Coming of Jesus by being cast into a lake of fire and brimstone? (Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 19:20). Hmmm. Thinking face.
So, since all the other prophecies in Ezekiel are coming true while we look on (e.g., the prophecies about the time of the ingathering and rebirth of Israel as a nation, such as chapters 36 and 37), then who could possibly be the future king of Tyre, which is within the territory of the practically leaderless and bankrupt country of Lebanon?
Read Ezekiel 28 for yourself and let me know what you think.
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