Ezekiel 28:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Thou hast been in Eden, &c.— Thou wast as Eden, &c. Houbigant. "As thy situation was pleasant, so wast thou plentifully supplied with every thing which could contribute to render thy life agreeable." A state of paradise, in the common acceptation, denotes a condition every way complete and happy. But this expression alludes to the felicity which Adam enjoyed in paradise before his fall. There is something, says Mr. Peters, in this prophesy of Ezekiel, which might incline one to think, that the garden of Eden, or paradise, was become by this time, with the Jews, the happy seat of good souls in their state of separation; for, describing the pride and vanity of the prince of Tyre, and his boasted happiness, he expresses it by this phrase, Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; as blessed and happy in thine own imagination, as the first man, in paradise, shall we say?—Or rather (for he seems to speak of it as a state of felicity still subsisting somewhere) as good souls in the regions of the blessed, the celestial paradise. This last seems the more probably to be the meaning, because the prophet ascends a step higher in the following verse, and places this ambitious prince where he had placed himself in his own thoughts, among the angels of God, and that in the superior orders. Thou art the anointed cherub, &c. Nay, we are told, Ezekiel 28:2 that his heart was so lifted up as to say, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas. See Dissert. p. 399. Instead of, Prepared in thee, we may read, Prepared for thee.