Tyre, a Ship: The Metaphorical World of Ezekiel 27 in Ancient Judah1

This essay offers a close reading of the dirge in Ez 27, the metaphorical description of the famed and sinking Tyrian ship. The analysis pays close attention to the symbolic world of the text, situating it within the literary and historical milieux of fourth-century BCE Judah, when Jerusalemite literati began codifying their authoritative texts into the collections of »books« that eventually became the Hebrew Bible. The essay argues that the symbolic text of Ez 27 contributed to late Persian-period understandings of the past, present, and future cities of Tyre and Jerusalem within an imagined Yahwistic empire. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]