I love how a JW or other hard core religious person will either read about Tyre and not bother to check to see if it is true or try to defend the prophecy by pointing to a few leftover ruins as fulfilled prophecy.
Tyre shall never be rebuilt. Failed prophecy?
by GBSJG 25 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Narkissos
Excellent article Ingenuous: Ezekiel 29:17ff is the most obvious admission that the prophecy of 26--28 was not fulfilled.
One might also add the (probably still later) passage of Isaiah 23, which suggests a completely different ending to the expected destruction (v. 17f:):
At the end of seventy years, the LORD will visit Tyre, and she will return to her trade, and will prostitute herself with all the kingdoms of the world on the face of the earth. Her merchandise and her wages will be dedicated to the LORD; her profits will not be stored or hoarded, but her merchandise will supply abundant food and fine clothing for those who live in the presence of the LORD.
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pennycandy
GermanXJW's post deserves a LOL.
LOL!
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ballistic
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.
Sorry to pick fault with you, but that is like saying Egypt or Syria has never been a world leader again. The prophesy said it would not be rebuilt.
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Leolaia
Narkissos....I think it is pretty clear that Isaiah 23 is alluding to an earlier situation under Assyrian hegemony, as it belongs to a section (ch. 13-23) with numerous allusions to Assyrian campaigns in the ANE in the late 8th century and early 7th centuries (cf. Tiglath-pileser's capture of Damascus in 17:1-6, Sargon II's campaign of Ashdod in 20:1-6, the fall of Babylon to Sargon II in ch. 21, etc.), and the oracle about Tyre presumes an earlier fall of Babylon to Assyria (23:13: "Look at the land of the Chaldeans, this people that is now of no account! The Assyrians have made it a place for desert creatures; they raised up their siege towers, they stripped its fortresses bare and turned it into a ruin"). The situation best reflects the fall of Tyre to Esarhaddon in 677 BC and its replacement by an Assyrian port called "Esarhaddon's Port" on the Lebanese coast. The oracle turned out to be quite accurate since Tyre did not regain its prominance until after the conquest of Assyria by Babylon in the 610s.
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jayhawk1
Leolaia, I'm having a hard time following what you just said.
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Leolaia
jayhawk1....What I mean is that Isaiah 23 imho describes what happened to Tyre in the 7th century BC when it fell to the Assyrians, not to the Babylonian siege a century later. The first several sections of Isaiah (aside from some redactions and interpolations) go back to this earlier period and assume a wholly different political situation than the one during the time of Nebuchadnezzar. See for instance Isaiah 20:1-6 which explicitly prophesies about Sargon II in the late 7th century. Note that it isn't the Babylonians who are attacking Tyre in Isaiah 23. Babylon had already been destroyed by the Assyrians (v. 13); two chapters earlier Babylon was described as falling to the Medes (ch. 21), who in the 7th century BC were vassals of Assyria....it wasn't until a generation or two later that the Medes became allied with Babylon and attacked Assyria under Nabopolassar (cf. the hordes of Medes who destroyed the temple of Sin in Harran in 609 BC). Babylon underwent destruction twice in the period, first in 710 BC and then in 689 BC when it was razed to the ground by Sennacherib. Some time after Babylon had been destroyed, Tyre fell to Esarhaddon in 677 BC.
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GBSJG
I think this is one of the clearest examples of a prophecy that isn't fullfiled. The language used in Ezekiel 26:14 leaves no room for alternative interpretations. If you compare this to the text that says that the whole bible is inspired then I see a big problem.
The wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyre mentions that it currently has 117.000 inhabitants. There is also a link to Google Map so you can see for yourself that there are houses: http://www.earthspots.com/ExploreEarthSpot.php?NID=1211&MT=1 -
Narkissos
Leolaia,
While the core of Isaiah 23 may date to the Assyrian period, it also bears the editorial marks of later application(s). The key v. 13, which may include several strata of contradictory glosses, is notoriously difficult, cf. the opposite rendering in the NRSV: "Look at the land of the Chaldeans! This is the people; it was not Assyria. They destined Tyre for wild animals. They erected their siege towers, they tore down her palaces, they made her a ruin."
Whatever the case, the prose conclusion in v. 15-18 (with the exception of the song in v. 16) is widely recognised as a late addition to the poem, acknowledging the prosperity of Tyre in the post-exilic (probably Hellenistic) period, without any further message of doom on the horizon.
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Dansk
Maybe it was a spare tyre. Sorry. :-/
Ian