“You were in Eden” (Ezekiel 28)

Image: The Bible Project, 2019.

This text from Ezekiel and a related one in Isaiah 14:12-14 are often referenced in studies on the origin of Satan. What do you think?

Ezekiel 28:12–16 (NIV)
¹² “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. ¹³ You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. ¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. ¹⁵ You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. ¹⁶ Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.”

The problem is that Ezekiel says it was about the king of Tyre, a wealthy trade city just up the coast from Israel. Here’s the immediate context:

Ezekiel 28:11-13 (NIV)
¹¹ The word of the Lord came to me: ¹² “Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “You were the seal of perfection …, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. ¹³ You were in Eden, the garden of God …”’”

How can this text be about the king of Tyre? He was not in Eden, God’s garden in beginning.

Was God looking straight through him and seeing the power of evil behind him? There was a serpent in the garden, so one way to put this together is to identify the king of Tyre with the serpent in the garden, identify the serpent with Satan, and draw the conclusion that Satan must have started life as a decorated cherub in heaven, but was kicked out to cause all the troubles on earth.

That’s not the only way to piece the story together. There’s a more direct link between the king of Tyre and his ancestor, the human whom God placed in his garden. If we can get past our preoccupation with the individual, we might hear God addressing humanity rather than the serpent.

It was humanity God honoured above all creatures, imbued with the wisdom and beauty of God’s image (verse 12). He placed us in Eden, in the garden of his palace, decorating us as priests of the presence (verse 13). Our calling (according to Genesis 2:15) was to work and guard the garden of Eden where God lived among us. On earth, we were ordained with the role the cherubim have in heaven as guardians of the divine presence (verse 14).

We were honoured with God’s radiant glory, until the day we chose to grasp God’s power for ourselves (verse 15). When God’s investigation revealed we’d violated his trust, we were removed from God’s mountain, replaced by cherubim with flaming swords to guard his presence (verse 16).

If that’s right, Ezekiel 28 is more about human authorities claiming power over God’s world than it is about Satan’s origins. God is addressing the ongoing rejection of divine sovereignty that began with humans trying to take God’s authority (the knowledge of good and evil) into our own hands.

Ethbaal II, king of Tyre, was Exhibit A. He was so proud of himself, holding out against Babylon when even Jerusalem further south had fallen. Thirteen years later (573 BC), Tyre fell too. That’s why The Sovereign Lord instructed Ezekiel to sing a song of his demise, a lament for the king of Tyre (verse 11).

In fact, this whole section of Ezekiel is making the point that human rulers who claim to rule in God’s place cannot last. That includes:

• Amon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia (Ezekiel 25)
• Tyre and Sidon (Ezekiel 26–28)
• Egypt (Ezekiel 29–32).

And the Eden connection recurs as Ezekiel denounces Pharaoh’s claims to run the world. Ezekiel sings a lament for Pharaoh, the ruler who courted death by refusing to let God’s people go (Ezekiel 32).

That makes great sense of Ezekiel 28, but it leaves us with a puzzle. What about the main culprit? Why doesn’t Ezekiel condemn the one ruler who was trying to take over God’s world, take God’s people captive, and swallow the Land into his empire?

One reason is that Ezekiel views the king of Babylon as a sword in God’s hand. God is using him to cut down the proud rulers of this world (21:19; 30:24-25; 32:11).  That includes Egypt (29:18-20; 30:10, 24-25; 32:11), Tyre (26:7), and Jerusalem (17:12, 16; 19:9; 24:2).

Another reason is that Ezekiel is captive in Babylon. How long do you think he’d last if he proclaimed the death of the king? Unlike Isaiah, Ezekiel could not take up a taunt against the king of Babylon (Isaiah 14:3-27).

Perhaps the king of Babylon is included by implication. His was the land of the Tigris and Euphrates, the rivers of Eden (Genesis 2:14). Babel had been trying to take heaven’s authority into human hands since before there was a Promised Land (Genesis 11:4). And if God was going to install his Davidic prince again (Ezekiel 34:23-24; 37:24-25; 45–46), the days of the king of Babylon were numbered.

So what?

Why does it matter whether Ezekiel 28 is about a human king or Satan? Scripture is clear that there is an evil power at work in the rulers of this world, but it comes down to our focus. When we make it all about Satan instead of about how humans have handled the power God gave us in Eden, we miss the practical reality of how evil works in the systemic powers of the world.

There is an unhealthy preoccupation with Satan in some parts of the church. We ignore the clear statement of the text — say to the ruler of Tyre (verse 1), and take up a lament for the king of Tyre (verse 11) — because we’re desperate for texts about Satan. We miss the direct connection between the King of Tyre and his ancestor in the Garden, because we want it to be about the snake.

It leaves us focused on the wrong thing. We end up beating the air in what we call “spiritual warfare” but is more aptly described as heaping abuse on celestial beings (Jude 8). We’re sidetracked into imagining how spiritual powers work, instead of seeing what’s right there in front of us.

I don’t doubt that Satan wanted to get rid of God’s anointed, but Scripture doesn’t focus us on that. It points us to the human authorities where evil was at work: the high priests and the elders of the people … conspired on how they could surreptitiously arrest Jesus and kill him (Matthew 26:3-4). They handed him over to Pilate the governor (Matthew 27:2). And Pilate handed him over to be crucified (Matthew 27:26).

When the apostles pray in Acts, you don’t hear them attacking Satan. They describe the rulers of this world conspiring to protect their authority by rejecting God’s: Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed (Acts 4:27).

The problem is that the cross as the pathway to restore God’s reign makes no sense to those in power today: None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8).

Yes, there are rulers and authorities in the heavenly realm that God must deal with. But God’s way of dealing with them is to demonstrate his all-encompassing wisdom by accomplishing what he’d intended since creation, restoring the whole human family to our Father in the reign of Messiah Jesus our Lord. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians 3:10-11).

Let’s get our focus right. Like Ezekiel, we recognize how the rulers of our day claim power over God’s world. But our focus is not on dislodging Satan. Our focus is our Father. We raise our voice it is to invite God’s presence among us, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done. … Deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:10, 13).

What others are saying

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Ezekiel: A New Heart and a New Spirit, The Bible Speaks Today (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), 243:

God’s judgments in history are not directed impersonally at abstractions or structures, but at the human beings who run them and benefit from them. So here, Ezekiel turns his attention from Tyre itself to the man who ruled over it at the time—king Ethbaal II. It may be that the exiles imagined that Tyre would be able to resist Babylon and turn the tables on Nebuchadnezzar, which would of course benefit the Jewish exiles. That delusion may have grown as the siege dragged on without success. Doubtless Tyre’s ability to survive the siege for so long and to continue her maritime trade must have fuelled the arrogance of the king of Tyre, which is so much in focus in this chapter. Yahweh’s word through Ezekiel is that Tyre’s king is destined for the same fate as his city, in spite of the vast attributes and resources that were his partly by divine gift and partly by his own magnificent achievement.

Daniel Isaac Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997–), 117–119:

Echoes of the original Adam are evident in the characterization of the prince of Tyre in the first panel and the description of the cherub in the second. Like the king of Tyre, the first man (1) was created by God, (2) was divinely authorized to rule over the garden as king, (3) not being satisfied with the status of ʾādām, sought or claimed divinity, (4) was punished for this hubris by humiliation and death. …

During the second temple period, the view developed that Ezek. 28 was based on a tradition of an angelic “fall,” closely associated with the “fall” of humanity. Since the time of Origen many conservative Christians in particular have equated the king of Tyre with Lucifer (= Satan), “Brilliant One, son of the morning” (hêlēl ben-šāḥar), mentioned in Isa. 14:12. Accordingly, Ezekiel’s prophecy is thought to recount the circumstances of the original fall of Satan, who had previously been one of the cherubim attending the throne of God. But those who interpret the oracle historically reject this approach. Ezekiel’s prophecy is indeed couched in extravagant terms, but the primary referent within the context is clearly the human king of Tyre. In any case, for this prophet and his professional colleagues, as well as for the Hebrew historiographic narrators, human rebellion is problem enough.

Related posts

• The kingdom and spiritual warfare
• Spiritual warfare (podcast on Ephesians 6:10–17)
• The enigma of God’s throne (Ezekiel 1)
• What did Ezekiel mean by “The end is nigh”? (Ezekiel 7)