RJS on JesusCreed

Ezekiel is admittedly a hard book to understand. Daniel Bodi in Ezekiel & Daniel(Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary) comments that “Calvin never finished his commentary on Ezekiel and Luther put forth no major effort toward its interpretation.” (p. 403, I have the hard cover edition that includes the prophets from Isaiah to Daniel and page numbers are from this version.)

The king = Satan? According to the word of the Lord in this passage the king of Tyre was in Eden, the garden of God. Clearly this is a problem for any kind of literal interpretation of the passage. Some commentators (only a few) have assumed that the passage must be referring to Satan. After all, the garden was a real place some 3500 years earlier. The only “persons” in the garden were Adam, Eve, and Satan. It isn’t reasonable to assume the passage refers to Adam, therefore it must reference the fall of Satan.  Ezekiel 28 along with a passage in Isaiah 14 “How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!” are the primary references for this idea. It is highly unlikely that this is an appropriate interpretation of either passage, and it is a particularly strained interpretation of Ezekiel 28.