Ezekiel 27:26

"Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the heart of the seas. Thy riches, and thy wares, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the dealers in thy merchandise, and all the men of war that are in thee, with all thy company that is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the heart of the seas in the day of thy ruin. At the sound of the cry of thy pilots the suburbs shall shake, And all that handle the oar, their mariners, and all the pilots of the sea, shall come down from their ships; they shall stand upon the land, and shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust upon their heads; they shall wallow themselves in the ashes: and they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, and they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul and with bitter mourning."

THE SINKING OF THE MAJESTIC SHIP; TYRE (Ezekiel 27:26-36)

"The east wind hath broken thee ..." (Ezekiel 27:26). The destruction of Tyre is here spoken of as something already done; but the future tense of verbs in the following verse (Ezekiel 27:27) shows that we are dealing with a prophecy of what will happen, not with a summary of what has already happened. The event indicated by this, of course, is the 13-year siege of Tyre about to be initiated by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.

"(They) shall come down from their ships; they shall stand upon the land ..." (Ezekiel 27:29). The "ships" here are the smaller ships that accompanied the great ship Tyre and were dependent upon her. "The dependent cities and states are represented by these smaller ships. They were terrified by the great storm, called here `the East Wind,' namely the approach of the Babylonians.

The weeping, making themselves bald, wallowing in the ashes, and clothing them in sackcloth were all actions commonly associated with funerals.