Hubzilla

In Ezekiel 26, God declares (in quite certain terms) about Tyre: "I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt, for I the LORD have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD."

Yet, lookee here!

What is the apologist reaction to this obviously failed prophesy?

malookiemaloo

Hi!

I do know that Ezekiel mixes prophecies about Tyre with those about Satan-see chapter 28.


malookiemaloo

Family Man

They pretend it was fulfilled when Alexander razed the city a couple centuries later. They further pretend that because the name of city was changed later that the city of Tyre did indeed disappear, completely ignoring that there has been a city at that location from Biblical times to this day, and that Tyre was never a "bare rock".

anime

Easy. God hasn't done it yet.

NOGO

The problem is that Ezekiel says that his prophecy failed.

Ezekiel 29:18-20
"Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre; every head was made bald, and every shoulder rubbed raw; yet neither he nor his army received wages from Tyre, for the labor which they expended on it. Therefore thus says Yahweh God: `Surely I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he shall take away her wealth, carry off her spoil, and remove her pillage; and that will be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his recompense for which he served, because they worked for me....

Well Neb did not take Egypt either.

B. H. Manners

It just sucks to be Yahweh, doesn't it?

Steven Carr

Wordgames. What else have they got? Even if you banged their heads against the buildings, they would tell you that Tyre has never been rebuilt.

They point out that nobody has rebuilt the buildings which existed when Ezekiel wrote.

As though, there were cities today, which are the same as 2,500 years ago.

happyboy

well, you know, it must suck being the God of the bible: constantly handing out failed prophecies.

then again, it must actually be a pretty sweet deal, never mind the fact that His ability to prophecy fails miserably, time after time. after all, he has legions of devoted followers who overlook his numberous prophetic fubars and believe him anyways!

that's gotta be one sweet deal He's got going on! :banghead:

happyboy

Bobzammel

The city was beseiged; it was never destroyed to the extent it was prophecised.

NOGO

We know from Babylonian records that Neb besieged the city for 13+ years afterwhich a truce was negociated. Tyre would pay a tribute to Neb.

This is what Ezekiel says just before the Tyre prophecy ...
Ezekiel 26
1 Now in the eleventh year, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me saying,

... and then he says ...

Ezekiel 29
17 Now in the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me saying,
18 "Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre; every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare. But he and his army had no wages from Tyre for the labor that he had performed against it."


27 - 11 = 16

This is a very reasonable lapse of time considering that news did not travel very fast at the time. When a city is besieged it stops trading and soon everybody knows what is going on. When it resumed trade 13+ years later it must have taken some time before everybody knew that Tyre was back in business.

Ezekiel's prophecy was made as Neb besieged Tyre and he admitted that he was wrong after Neb went home.