And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
In Ezekiel 26:1-21, Ezekiel sets forth:
(1) Tyre's sin;
(2) Its doom;
(3) The instruments of executing it;
(4) The effect produced on other nations by her downfall. In Ezekiel 27:1-36, a lamentation over the fall of such earthly splendour. In Ezekiel 28:1-26, an elegy addressed to the king on the humiliation of his sacrilegious pride. Ezekiel, in his prophecies as to the pagan, exhibits the dark side only; because he views them simply in their hostility to the people of God, which shall outlive them all. Isaiah (Isaiah 23:1-18), on the other hand, at the close of judgments, holds out the prospect of blessing when Tyre should turn to the Lord.
In the eleventh year, in the first day of the month. The specification of the date, which had been omitted in the case of the four preceding objects of judgment, marks the greater weight attached to the fall of Tyre.
The eleventh year - namely, after the carrying away of Jehoiachin, the year of the fall of Jerusalem. The number of the month is, however, omitted, and the day only given. Since the month of the taking of Jerusalem was regarded as one of particular note-namely, the fourth month-also the fifth, on which it was actually destroyed (Jeremiah 52:6; Jeremiah 52:12-13), Rabbi-David reasonably supposes that Tyre uttered her taunt at the close of the fourth month, as her nearness to Jerusalem enabled her to hear of its fall very soon, and that Ezekiel met it with his threat against herself on "the first day" of the fifth month.