“‘O Tyre, you have said, “I am perfectly beautiful.”
27:8 The leaders 4 of Sidon 5 and Arvad 6 were your rowers;
your skilled 7 men, O Tyre, were your captains.
27:32 As they wail they will lament over you, chanting:
“Who was like Tyre, like a tower 8 in the midst of the sea?”
1 tn Heb “lift up over Tyre a lament.”
2 tn Heb “entrances.” The plural noun may reflect the fact that Tyre had two main harbors.
3 sn Rome, another economic power, is described in a similar way in Rev 17:1.
4 tc The MT reads “the residents of”; the LXX reads “your rulers who dwell in.” With no apparent reason for the LXX to add “the rulers” many suppose something has dropped out of the Hebrew text. While more than one may be possible, Allen’s proposal, positing a word meaning “elders,” is the most likely to explain the omission in the MT from a graphic standpoint and also provides a parallel to the beginning of v. 9. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:81.a parallel to v. 9.
5 map For location see Map1-A1; JP3-F3; JP4-F3.
6 sn Sidon and Arvad, like Tyre, were Phoenician coastal cities.
7 tn Or “wise.”
8 tn As it stands, the meaning of the Hebrew text is unclear. The translation follows the suggestion of M. Dahood, “Accadian-Ugaritic dmt in Ezekiel 27:32,” Bib 45 (1964): 83-84. Several other explanations and emendations have been offered. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:83, and D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:85-86, for a list of options.