‘Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Because you have set your heart as the heart of the gods, therefore behold I will bring strangers on you, the terrible of the nations, and they will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and they will mar your brightness. They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die the deaths of those who are slain in the heart of the seas.”
His whole attitude towards Yahweh and towards his own exalted status, and that of his city, was such that he had brought on himself his own punishment. He had set his heart to be one among the gods, so he and his people would be destroyed by men, by ‘strangers', by the most terrible of the nations (Babylon - Ezekiel 30:11; Ezekiel 31:12; Ezekiel 32:12). He had claimed to be perfect in beauty, a beauty revealed in wisdom, as one who shone before the world, so this beauty will be destroyed by the swords of men, and this brightness defiled by men, and he will go down into the grave where all men go. He will die as so many of his seamen have died before him, swallowed up by the sea, which in his case is represented by the enemy hosts. (Although many would no doubt be tossed into the harbour and literally be swallowed up by the sea). Such will be his ‘god-like' end.