Page 140 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

134 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.
of the expressions are borrowed for the after predictions
about the Antichrist or man of sin yet to come. The
prince was the head and centre and personification of
that pride and wealth found in Tyre as a whole. Nor
is there any character of pride baser, more blinding,
more corrupting. It lives in selfishness, appeals to it
and is exalted by it in its grossest form. No wonder
that the New Testament brands covetousness as idolatry,
and characterizes the love of money as a root of all
evil. The haughtiest station marked this prince. Did
he say he was God, and sit in His seat (or throne) in
the heart of the seas? He was man, not God, and
must soon leave it, however impiously he set his heart
as that of God. It is common to all who amass wealth
to give themselves credit for wisdom. So did the prince:
wiser than Daniel, he discerned what was hidden from
others. Alas ! what folly and poverty. Was he rich
toward God ? nay, he had amassed riches, and gold and
silver had crowded into his exchequer. This was the
aim of his wisdom, this its triumph, for it was his own
doing. Self, not God, was in all his thoughts.
Had the prince of Tyre then only thus perverted all
he knew from his proximity to Israel? God would
teach him that his responsibility was according to what
should have been his profit, not pride, his doom only the
more stern and sure and speedy. “ Therefore thus saith
the Lord Jehovah; Because thou hast set thine heart
as the heart of God; behold, therefore, I will bring
strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and
they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy
wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. They
shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the