Although Matthew Hogan's article was written in response to material that did not appear in The Skeptical Review, I have decided to publish it anyway. Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre is often cited as an amazing example of prophecy fulfillment, so it should be a subject of interest to TSR readers. As we will see, this "prophecy," like all others in the fundamentalist repertoire of fulfillment claim, offers no plausible evidence that the Bible was divinely inspired.
In my booklet Prophecies: Imaginary and Unfulfilled, I showed that Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre failed, because Nebuchadnezzar's siege of the island city did not succeed (a fact easily verifiable by reliable historical records) and because, quite obviously, the city was not permanently destroyed, "never to be rebuilt" (Ezek. 26:14). This too is a fact verifiable not just by reliable historical records but by the actual existence of Tyre today.
Now comes Matthew Hogan to inform us that I have misinterpreted the prophecy because of my failure to notice a change from the singular pronouns he and his (used in reference to Nebuchadnezzar) to the plural form they, which Hogan argues was referring to nations in the future and not just to Nebuchadnezzar. It may surprise Hogan to learn that I was well aware of this switch in pronouns when I addressed the Tyre prophecy in my booklet, but I was also aware of something else that has apparently escaped Hogan's notice. Such pronoun shifts are quite common in the Bible, especially in the book of Ezekiel. From having taught college writing for 30 years, I learned that it is apparently difficult for some writers to maintain strict adherence to the rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement. The average person, for example, would think nothing of writing, "The team lost their game last night," but the "correct" way to write it would be, "The team lost its game last night." The word team is grammatically singular, so strict adherence to the rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement requires that the singular pronoun its be used in reference to team. Most people, however, aware that a team consists of more than one person, will carelessly use the pronoun their in a sentence like this. This is similar to what happened in Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre.
Before we examine this prophecy, let's first notice that ungrammatical pronoun shifts were characteristic of Ezekiel's writing. In the following examples from Ezekiel, to show how obvious the shifts are, I will italicize the antecedent and emphasize in bold print the pronoun referring back to the antecedent:
Son of man, write down the name of the day, this very day -- the king of Babylon started his siege against Jerusalem this very day. And utter a parable to the rebellious house, and say to them ... (24:2-3).
Syria was your merchant because of the abundance of goods you made. They gave you for your wares emeralds, purple, embroidery, fine linen, corals, and rubies (27:16).
And the land of Egypt shall become desolate and waste; then they will know that I am Yahweh (29:9).
Behold, I am against you, Sidon; I will be glorified in your midst; and they shall know that I am Yahweh (28:20).
I could cite many other examples, but these are enough to establish that Ezekiel had a habit of ungrammatically shifting pronoun references in his writing. In the last example, when Ezekiel had Yahweh addressing Sidon in the second person (you and your), he inadvertently shifted and had the statement finish with a third person plural (they) reference back to the singular Sidon.
With this background in Ezekiel's pronoun usage established, we can now see just how weak Hogan's defense of the Tyre prophecy is. Let's look at the place in the prophecy where Hogan claims that Ezekiel stopped referring to Nebuchadnezzar individually and switched to "many nations" in general. Keep in mind that even Hogan admits that Nebuchadnezzar was the point of reference in the beginning of the text, which for brevity's sake I will skip:
The point where the shift from singular to plural occurs is obvious, but does the shift warrant the significance that Hogan attaches to it? If in the entire book of Ezekiel, we could not find an incorrect pronoun shift, we would agree that Hogan has a point, but when we are able to find numerous pronoun shifts in Ezekiel's writings, we have to conclude that Hogan's point is weak indeed.
The reason for the shift from singular to plural in this text was probably the same as in the other examples of shifts that we noted in the book of Ezekiel. In verses 10 and 11, Ezekiel predicted that horses (plural), horsemen (plural), wagons (plural), and chariots (plural) would enter the city and thunder through the streets. Hence, the shift to they in the very next verse could have been as inadvertent as Ezekiel's usage of they to refer to the house of Israel and to Syria and Jerusalem. All of the antecedents were singular in these cases, yet Ezekiel used the plural they in reference to them. This is a more plausible explanation for the abrupt shift in the Tyre prophecy than Hogan's claim that Ezekiel suddenly changed the subject of the prophecy from Nebuchadnezzar to "many nations."
There are good reasons to believe that the shift from singular to plural in the Tyre prophecy was just another case of Ezekiel's careless use of pronouns, but if not and if Ezekiel actually did intend the shift in pronoun reference to be a shift in subject, Hogan will have to tackle a problem that would be just as damaging to biblical inerrancy as an obvious prophecy failure. Why would a writer who was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity to prophesy the destruction of a powerful contemporary city-state communicate his message as confusingly as Ezekiel did? The singular pronouns he and his ended abruptly, and in the very next verse shifted to the plural they without any attempt at all to notify the readers. Is that any way for an inspired prophet to write? Should readers who are expected to believe that a book was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity not have a right to expect clear, unequivocal writing in that book? One would certainly think so, but if Hogan is right about the Tyre prophecy, then Ezekiel didn't understand a very elementary writing principle: changes of direction in writing, and especially sudden changes, should be signaled with transitional devices. Hogan can look forever between verses 11 and 12 in the Tyre prophecy, but he will find no transitional markers. Without such a marker, we have no reason at all to think that Ezekiel intended to switch the focus of his prophecy from Nebuchadnezzar to other nations.
In support of his assertion that "Nebuchadnezzar didn't destroy Tyre, because he wasn't the one prophesied to do so," Hogan said, "Indeed, Ezekiel mentions (29:18-19) that the Babylonian king would receive `wages from Tyre.'" Apparently, Hogan has difficulty understanding fairly plain language, because this is not what Ezekiel 29:18-19 actually said. The best way to show this is to look at the passage:
The passage actually says the exact opposite of what Hogan said. As history records, Nebuchadnezzar put considerable labor into a prolonged siege of Tyre but was unable to penetrate the island defenses. In this text, Ezekiel, astonishingly enough, is recognizing that despite his prophecy that Tyre would fall to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king had actually received no "wages" for his effort. As compensation for Nebuchadnezzar's failure to profit from the siege of Tyre, Ezekiel was promising that Yahweh would reward the Babylonians with Egypt:
Why Hogan thinks that this passage teaches that Nebuchadnezzar was to receive "wages from Tyre" is a mystery to me. It actually teaches that Yahweh would give him Egypt as compensation for the wages that he failed to receive from Tyre. As I noted in my prophecy booklet, this passage confirms that even Ezekiel himself recognized that his prophecy against Tyre had failed. It is difficult to understand the minds of biblical prophets, but one would think that Ezekiel would have had the common sense not to include this admission of a prophecy failure in his book.
Hogan claims that Ezekiel 26:7-11 prophesied only that Nebuchadnezzar would lay siege to Tyre, not that he would destroy it, but I suggest that he read the text again. He admits that the he in these verses was Nebuchadnezzar, so the prophecy was clearly predicting that Nebuchadnezzar would come from the north (v:7) and first slay with the sword Tyre's "daughter villages in the field" (v:8). As Hogan correctly noted, Tyre had been built as an island stronghold but had expanded onto the mainland with "daughter villages." We know from historical records that invaders often sacked these mainland villages, and Nebuchadnezzar did the same during his siege of Tyre. He destroyed the mainland villages, but he was never able to penetrate the island defenses.
Destruction of the mainland villages, however, was not the extent of what Ezekiel had prophesied for Nebuchadnezzar, and the text makes that very clear. After destroying the "daughter villages," he would "heap up a siege mound against" Tyre (v:8). He would direct a battering ram against the walls of Tyre and with his axes break down the towers of Tyre (v:9). He would enter the city with his horses, horsemen, wagons, and chariots (v:10). HE would trample all of Tyre's streets with the hooves of his horses, and he would slay Tyre's people with the sword (v:11). All of these things, Ezekiel prophesied that he would do, but in reality Nebuchadnezzar accomplished none of them, because he was never able to capture the island city.
That Ezekiel intended for these predictions to apply to the island stronghold of Tyre and not to the mainland villages is quite evident from verse 8: "He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the field; he will heap up a siege mound against you, and raise a defense against you." Clearly, the "daughter villages in the field," i.e. the villages on the mainland, were not included in the pronoun you, which was a reference to Tyre proper, the island stronghold. Ezekiel predicted that the mainland villages would be destroyed and then Nebuchadnezzar would turn his army against Tyre proper, batter down its walls and towers, and enter the city with his horses, horsemen, wagons, and chariots. But it just didn't happen. The prophecy failed.
A distinctive part of the Tyre prophecy is Ezekiel's prediction that Tyre would be destroyed and never built again. Furthermore, this prediction was in the same context with the prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city, so we can chalk this up as another failure in the Tyre prophecy: "I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt, for I Yahweh have spoken" (26:14). Ezekiel was so confident that Tyre's destruction would be permanent that he repeated this prediction twice (26:21; 27:36), but even Hogan admits that the permanent destruction of the city never happened. Various attempts have been made to explain away this failure, but Hogan's is perhaps the most ridiculous of them all. He argues that the final and permanent destruction of Tyre will occur when Christ returns.
To see the absurdity of Hogan's position, we need only examine what the New Testament teaches about the second coming of Jesus. At this time, so the New Testament claims, the earth itself will be destroyed:
I certainly don't believe there will ever be a second coming of Jesus (assuming even that there was a first coming), but I would think that Hogan does. If so, he surely believes what the passage above says: the earth and the things that are in it will be dissolved with fervent heat when Jesus returns. If this is so, it would have been utterly absurd for Yahweh to predict through Ezekiel that he would destroy Tyre permanently when Jesus returns, because not just Tyre but every other city on earth would also be destroyed permanently at that time (if New Testament eschatology is true). Furthermore, Ezekiel had Yahweh declaring, "I will make you [Tyre] like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt" (26:14). Obviously, if the earth and all of the elements in it have been dissolved, then it wouldn't be possible for Tyre to be rebuilt, and it couldn't very well become a place for spreading nets, because if the ground on which it had been built didn't even exist, nets couldn't be spread on it. Nets, in fact, wouldn't exist either. So if Yahweh knew that Tyre would not be permanently destroyed until the end of time, why did he make such inane statements as these?
The fact is that Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre makes no mention of the end of time or the second coming of Jesus. All of this is simply an arbitrary interpretation that is conveniently unfalsifiable, because if the earth should stand for billions of years, people like Hogan could argue that the Tyre prophecy will yet be fulfilled when Jesus returned. I would like to think that humanity will have progressed beyond crass superstitious nonsense by that time, but the more I deal with biblical fundamentalism, the more I wonder if it will ever disappear completely.
As for the switch to the first-person pronoun I in the Tyre prophecy, Hogan makes entirely too much of this. It was not a switch but merely a return to the first person with which the prophecy had begun: "Therefore, thus says Yahweh God, `Behold, I am against you, O Tyre" (v:3). After then describing in third person the devastation that Nebuchadnezzar would bring upon Tyre, the narrative turned to the first person ("I will put an end to your songs") as a means of showing that Nebuchadnezzar would merely be the agent through whom Yahweh would destroy Tyre. If Hogan will take the time to examine the book of Ezekiel more carefully, he will see that this narrative style was characteristic of Ezekiel's prophecies. Ezekiel 28:6-10 and 30:10-12 are just two examples of where Ezekiel began a prophecy with Yahweh speaking in the first person after which he shifted to third-person narrations to describe the agencies of punishment that he would use, and then he returned to first-person narration by Yahweh.
Hogan's interpretation of the Tyre prophecy is just another
frantic
grasping for straws by a biblicist who can't admit that the Bible is
not
inerrant. If he wants to, Hogan may respond to this article.
