Ezekiel 26:4-6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, &c. The expressions of these verses signify that Tyre should be entirely demolished, and that the place where the city stood should be made as bare as the top of a rock, and that it should be employed to no other use but that of a desolate shore, the drying of the fishermen's nets. Nebuchadnezzar quite demolished old Tyre, and the stones and rubbish of it were afterward made use of by Alexander, to carry on a causeway from the continent to the island where new Tyre stood, by which means he took that. This latter city is since so decayed, that there are no remains of it left but a few huts belonging to fishermen, who are in the habit of hanging out their nets to dry upon the rocks, as is related by travellers that have been upon the place. “The present inhabitants of Tyre.” says Maundrell, page 49, “are only a few poor wretches, harbouring themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly upon fishing.” The Jesuit Hadrianus Parvillerius resided ten years in Syria; and the famous Huetius heard him say, that when he approached the ruins of Tyre, and beheld the rocks stretched forth to the sea, and the great stones scattered up and down on the shore, made clean and smooth by the sun, waves, and winds, and useful only for the drying of fishermen's nets, many of which happened at the time to be spread on them, it brought to his memory this prophecy: see Newton on the prophecies, Diss. 11.; and note on Isaiah 23:1, &c. And her daughters shall be slain with the sword By the daughters of Tyre here are meant the lesser towns, which were under her jurisdiction as the mother city, or metropolis of the kingdom: the inhabitants of these would be slain with the sword.