NOTES for Eze 28:1-26

The prophet Ezekiel’s lament over the fate of the king of Tyre is full of undisguised sarcasm towards paganism in general and the pagan state in particular. The reason is that paganism had no clear distinction between deity and human beings. Only the Revelation given to Moses says that God’s nature is incomprehensible to human beings and infinitely surpasses everything accessible to our knowledge. Pagans, by contrast, liked to trace the ancestry of outstanding figures back to one god or another: we see this in the titles of Egyptian pharaohs, in the ancient cult of heroes, and in the mythologies of many ancient and modern pagan peoples. Perhaps heroes born of marriages between deity and human being are the only way for a pagan to conceive of that closeness to God which only the New Covenant reveals... In any event, the inhabitants of Tyre were no exception.

Another important aspect of this pagan deification of human beings and cult of heroes is that it was very often used to justify the phenomenon of state power. In our modern conceptual framework, we speak of the legitimacy of power and try to promote that legitimacy in order to explain why this authority should be obeyed. For us, as in antiquity, the strictly functional approach to earthly power characteristic of the New Testament, particularly the apostle Paul’s letters, proves very difficult. That is precisely why we produce various myths about states’ popular character and greatness. The deification of kings or their ancestors in antiquity was a kind of public-relations exercise, likewise intended to explain to subjects why this king should be obeyed. After all, we can hardly say of the king of Tyre, the emperor Nero or our officials that they benefit us more than themselves—hence the need for a myth.

But the radical difference between myth and God’s Revelation is that, on contact with reality, myth collapses, whereas Revelation is confirmed and becomes intelligible. When we look at Nero’s actual policies, it becomes clear that he is no genius or earthly god, but simply a petty and malicious tyrant. When we look at our officials’ behaviour, it becomes clear that they—not all, but very many—are concerned not with the country’s good, but with their own pockets. When the king of Tyre, as the prophet Ezekiel says, faces foreign armies, it becomes clear that he is no god, but merely a man who has thought far too highly of himself.

Thus, almost in passing, in a discussion of the destinies of nations, the prophet touches on the deification of state power and those who wield it—and leaves not one stone of this idea upon another. His exposure of the absurdity of the Tyrian kings’ claims to divine authority becomes the background for the prophecy that the true God will gather and restore his people. Unlike the ambitions of self-deifying rulers, this prophecy was fulfilled exactly, as history bears witness.