Ezekiel 26:19

"Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and the great waters shall cover thee; then will I bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, to the people of old time, and will make thee to dwell in the nether part of the earth, in the places that are desolate of old, that thou be not inhabited; and I will set glory in the land of the living. I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt no more have any being; though thou be sought for, yet shall thou never be found again, saith the Lord Jehovah."

In a passage like this, we can understand why the New Testament declares that, "Christ Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:10) Certainly, the glorious hope of eternal life and the restored fellowship of lost Mankind with the Creator is nowhere visible in a passage such as this. "This passage gives the impression that the pit is identical with Sheol, the realm of the dead, which appears here as a place of no return and of utter lostness. The resurrection does not appear here, but simply a murky, shadowy, existence alongside the peoples of old and the ruins of the past."[23] Of course, there are other passages, here and there, throughout the Old Testament which indeed give glimpses of the resurrection from the dead; and for these we humbly thank God and praise his holy name; but the tragic passage here is not one of those passages.

In the practical sense, "Tyre is here compared to the dead who are placed in their tombs and then are heard no more in the land of the living."[24]

"To the people of old time ..." (Ezekiel 26:20). Keil saw in this, "A reference to the people of the `old world,' that is the generation of the Ante-Diluvians."[25] This suggests an obvious analogy. That godless world that lived prior to the Great Deluge was covered with the "great waters," even as the rains of Tyre were scraped into the sea and the "great waters" covered them, thus providing for Tyre, "Its everlasting dwelling-place, among the rains of that primeval world which was destroyed by the flood, and beside that godless race of the Ante-Diluvians."[26]

"Yet thou shalt never be found again ..." (Ezekiel 26:21). This prophecy of the total disappearance of Tyre was literally fulfilled in the disappearance of the continental city of Tyre. "It is true that the insular Tyre afterward attained some distinction, but the ancient continental city never recovered from her ruin."[27]