Tyre shall never be rebuilt. Failed prophecy?

GBSJG

According to Ezekiel 26:14 Tyre will never be rebuilt after it is destroyed.

The Society says that after Nebuchadrez’zar Alexander the Great came and finally destroyed Tyre. But in Insight on the scriptures they also mention that Tyre was rebuilt and later Jesus and Paul go to Tyre.

I can't find the WTS explenation why Ezekiel 26:14 failed. Am I missing something?

AlanF

The Society officially claims that Tyre (Tyrus) was never rebuilt. The best they can manage is to quote an outdated Bible dictionary to the effect that Tyre's population is small, but today its population is a couple of hundred thousand. It has been populated to various levels ever since Alexander's conquering of it, and was a significant trading city during Roman times.

AlanF

yucca

Tyre was part of a major commercial empire that included the entire Mediterranean world. The city of Carthage in North Africa had been founded as its colony. Because the inhabitants and leaders rejoiced at the destruction of Jerusalem God thru Ezekiel fortold that God would bring many nations against Tyre and cause destruction. Nebuchadnezzar Alexander the Great and others.caused destruction of Tyre. The old city, and newly rebuilt , have both remained ruins to this day. There has never been a great commercial center there There has never been a great city there. There have been fishermen,people coming and going, but it has never played a role on the world scene.

Justitia Themis

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Mentioned

intheGreekScriptures. Despite the city’s total destruction by Alexander, it was rebuilt during the Seleucid period, and in the first century C.E. it was a prominent port of call on the Mediterranean. During Jesus’ great Galilean ministry, a number of people from around Tyre and Sidon came to hear his message and to be cured of their diseases. (Mr 3:8-10; Lu 6:17-19) Some months later Jesus personally visited the region around Tyre, on which occasion he cured the demon-possessed child of a Syrophoenician woman. (Mt 15:21-29; Mr 7:24-31) Jesus observed that, had he performed in Tyre and Sidon the powerful works that he did in Chorazin and Bethsaida, the pagans of Tyre and Sidon would have been more responsive than those Jews.—Mt 11:20-22; Lu 10:13, 14.

Leolaia

In this old picture, you can see that nearly the entire extent of old Tyre that is above sea level is built over and inhabited. Even the sandy portion in the foreground, which corresponds to the site of Alexander the Great's silted-over causeway, is today substantially developed as can be seen in this picture:

The present-day city stands in contrast to the statements cited by the Society (as fulfillment of Bible prophecy) from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Maundrell in 1697 ("Its present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches harbouring themselves in the vaults and subsisting chiefly upon fishing") and Hasselquist in 1751 ("Here are about ten inhabitants, Turks and Christians, who live by fishing").

It is true that much of the original island lies below sea level (including the southern Egyptian harbor), but site of the old citadel at the highest part of the island and the northern Phoenician harbor today is the location of the modern city:

In the image above (adapted from a recent geoarchaeology article on excavations in Tyre), the present-day peninsula is marked in blue while the borders of the old Bronze Age island and the coastline are marked in red and yellow respectively (note that the island in Iron Age II, the time of Nebuchadnezzar, was presumably smaller than in the Bronze Age). The overlap between the two is marked in pink, and you can compare this location with the pictures above.

VM44

The pictures Leolaia posted prove beyond a doubt Ezekiel 26:14 was not fulfilled.

"And I will make you a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what you will become. Never will you be rebuilt; for I myself, Jehovah, have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah."

Ezekiel should have been careful, he attributed these words to Jehovah not once, but twice in the same sentence!

This along with the Ezekiel's unfulfilled prophecy of 40 years of desolation for Egypt makes one wonder why the book of Ezekiel was classified as an inspired prophetic book of the Bible.

--VM44

Further proof of authenticity is to be found in the dramatic fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecies against neighboring nations, such as Tyre, Egypt, and Edom. For example, Ezekiel prophesied that Tyre would be devastated, and this was partly fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar took the city after a siege of 13 years. (Ezek. 26:2-21) This conflict did not mean the complete end for Tyre. However, Jehovah’s judgment was that it should be totally destroyed. He had foretold through Ezekiel: "I will scrape her dust away from her and make her a shining, bare surface of a crag. . . . Your stones and your woodwork and your dust they will place in the very midst of the water." (26:4, 12) This was all fulfilled more than 250 years later when Alexander the Great moved against the island city of Tyre. Alexander’s soldiers scraped up all the debris of the ruined mainland city and threw it into the sea, making a half-mile [800 m] causeway out to the island city. Then, with an intricate siegework, they scaled the 150-foot-high [46 m] walls to take the city in 332 B.C.E. Thousands were killed, and many more were sold into slavery. As Ezekiel had also predicted, Tyre became the ‘bare surface of a crag and a drying yard for dragnets.’ (26:14) On the other side of the Promised Land, the treacherous Edomites were also annihilated, in fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy. (25:12, 13; 35:2-9) And, of course, Ezekiel’s prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel’s restoration also proved to be accurate.—17:12-21; 36:7-14.

Compare Ezekiel 26:14:

And I will make you a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what you will become. Never will you be rebuilt; for I myself, Jehovah, have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah.

GermanXJW

Maybe it was a spare tyre. Sorry. :-/

Tyre shall never be rebuilt. Failed prophecy?

GBSJG

AlanF

yucca

Justitia Themis

Leolaia

VM44

AlanF

Ingenuous

V

GermanXJW

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