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The City That Thought It Was Untouchable.

Q: Which Old Testament Prophecies Have Been Verified by History?

Daniel predicted four empires in sequence — verified by history. Isaiah named Cyrus 150 years early. Dozens of OT prophecies have documented historical fulfillment. The track record is unusually strong.

Ezekiel 26 — The city that saw someone else's tragedy and smelled opportunity

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Key Takeaways

Tyre didn't raise an army against Jerusalem — it just saw the devastation and thought 'more market share for us,' and that attitude alone triggered God's judgment.

"I will silence your music" — one quiet line amid violent imagery that captures what it means for an entire culture built on self-sufficiency to go permanently dark.
God described judgment arriving like ocean waves, nation after nation, to show that no amount of wealth or strategic positioning can outlast divine accountability.
When coastal kings stripped their robes and sat in the dirt, it wasn't sympathy — it was the terrifying realization that if the mightiest trading city could fall, no one was safe.
Tucked inside a passage about total destruction, God says "I will set beauty in the land of the living" — judgment is never his final word.

📢 Chapter 26 — The City That Thought It Was Untouchable 🌊

had just fallen. The city of God — razed. The — destroyed. The people of — dragged off into . It was the darkest moment in history. And while the dust was still settling, one city looked at the rubble and saw a business opportunity.

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Which Old Testament Prophecies Have Been Verified by History?

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. The ancient trading powerhouse on the Mediterranean coast. A city so wealthy, so strategically positioned, so confident in its own invincibility that it heard about Jerusalem's collapse and its first reaction was: finally — more market share for us. What God said next through should make anyone who's ever profited from someone else's pain stop and listen carefully.

The Wrong Thing to Say at a Funeral 🎯

The date is recorded — the eleventh year of the , which places this right around the time was being destroyed by . And God spoke to :

"Son of man, because Tyre said about Jerusalem: 'The gateway to the nations is shattered — and it swings wide open for me. Now that she's been destroyed, I'll be the one who profits' —

therefore, this is what the Lord God says: I am against you, Tyre. I will bring nation after nation crashing against you — the way the sea sends wave after wave against the shore.

They will tear down your walls. They will demolish your towers. I will scrape away your very soil and leave you as nothing but bare rock. You'll become a place in the middle of the sea where fishermen spread their nets. You will be plundered by the nations, and your settlements on the mainland will fall to the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord."

There's something chilling about the image God used here — waves. Not a single invasion, but wave after wave after wave. The sea doesn't stop. It just keeps coming. thought it was watching someone else's tragedy from a safe distance. It was actually watching a preview of its own.

And notice what triggered all of this. Tyre didn't attack Jerusalem. It didn't raise an army. It just looked at someone else's devastation and thought, how can I benefit from this? That was enough. God pays attention to what you celebrate — and what you refuse to grieve.

The War Machine Comes North 🏚️

Now God got specific. This wasn't going to be some vague, distant threat. He named the instrument of judgment:

"This is what the Lord God says: I am bringing Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon against Tyre from the north — king of kings — with horses, chariots, cavalry, and a massive army.

He will cut down your mainland settlements with the sword. He will build siege walls around you, raise assault ramps against you, and lock his shields together overhead. He will bring battering rams slamming against your walls and tear your towers apart with his axes.

His horses will be so numerous that their dust will blot out the sky. Your walls will shake from the thunder of horsemen, wagons, and chariots as he enters your gates the way soldiers enter a city whose defenses have already been broken.

His horses' hooves will trample every street. He will kill your people with the sword. Your great pillars — the ones that made your skyline famous — will crash to the ground.

They will plunder your wealth. They will loot your merchandise. They will demolish your walls, tear apart your beautiful homes, and throw your stones, your timber, your very soil into the sea.

I will silence your music. The sound of your instruments will never be heard again.

I will make you bare rock — a place for spreading fishing nets. You will never be rebuilt. I am the Lord. I have spoken."

The level of detail here is staggering. God didn't just announce destruction — he described the sound of it. The shaking walls. The thundering cavalry. The crash of pillars hitting the ground. And then, in the middle of all that violent imagery, one line that lands differently: I will silence your music.

was a city of culture, beauty, commerce — the kind of place that always had music playing. The harbors full of ships, the markets buzzing, the entertainment never stopping. And God said: all of it goes quiet. Every party ends eventually. Every empire that builds its identity on wealth and self-sufficiency eventually meets a force it can't negotiate with.

The Watching World Goes Silent 👑

The destruction of wasn't going to happen in a vacuum. The whole Mediterranean world was watching — and what they saw would terrify them. God continued:

"This is what the Lord God says to Tyre: Won't the coastlands tremble at the sound of your collapse? When the wounded are groaning and the slaughter fills your streets?

Then every ruler along the coast will step down from their thrones. They will take off their royal robes. They will strip away their embroidered garments. They will wrap themselves in trembling instead. They will sit on the ground, shaking constantly, horrified at what happened to you.

And they will sing a funeral song over you:

'How you have been destroyed — you who were famous across the seas! The renowned city, mighty on the ocean, whose people made the whole coast afraid of them! Now the coastlands tremble on the day of your fall. The nations along the sea are shaken by your end.'"

Picture the most powerful business leaders you can think of. The people who set the trends, control the markets, and seem completely untouchable. Now picture every single one of them sitting on the floor in shock because the biggest player just collapsed overnight. That's what God was describing.

Kings taking off their robes. Sitting in the dirt. Not out of sympathy — out of terror. Because if Tyre could fall, anyone could. The funeral song they sang wasn't just grief. It was the sound of people realizing their own vulnerability for the first time.

Swallowed by the Deep 🌑

The final image is the heaviest. God wasn't just talking about military defeat anymore. He was describing something that felt almost cosmic — a city swallowed by the waters of chaos itself:

"This is what the Lord God says: When I make you a desolate city — like cities where no one lives anymore — when I bring the ocean depths up over you and the great waters cover you completely —

then I will send you down into the pit, to join the people of ancient times. I will make you dwell in the world below, among ruins as old as time, with those who have descended into the grave. You will never be inhabited again.

But I will set beauty in the land of the living.

I will bring you to a terrible end. You will be no more. People will search for you, but you will never be found again, declares the Lord God."

Let that settle for a moment. A city so powerful, so established, so central to the ancient world — and God said it would simply cease to exist. People would look for it and find nothing. The waters would close over it like it had never been there.

And then, tucked into the middle of that darkness, one extraordinary line: But I will set beauty in the land of the living. Even in a passage about total destruction, God pointed forward to — not for , but for his people. isn't the end of the story. It never is. The same God who tears down what's built on is the one who plants beauty where it's been missing. That's the thread of running underneath even the heaviest passages in . It's quiet here. Almost a whisper. But it's there.