BIBLICA ET ORIENTALIA - 46
Corral, Martin AlonsoEzekiel’s Oracles Against Tyre
2002 pp. XIV-250
This work is a study of the historical reality and motivations of the Tyrian oracles in Ezekiel 26:1-28:19. It shows that economic and political reasons are fhe main causes for the condemnation. Judah’s economic stagnation was the direct result of Tyre’s economic policies and trade practices, which may bave included selling Judean slaves after Jerusalem’s destruction in 586. Social factors are important as well. Tyrian products were status symbols representing the oppression of a dishonest Tyrian elite. A clear connection between Tyre’s religion and her economic activities is also observable. Tyrian colonizing activities were a continuation of her Canaanite religion. The study provides a new interpretation of Ezekiel 26:2, the clue for understanding the oracles, showing that the text describes the situation of desolation that resulted from Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the Philistine ports at the end of the 7ch century. Tyre anticipated a major trade shift to her own ports that would mean Judah’s economic ruin.
MARTIN CORRAL, born in 1961, completed a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible at New York University in 2000. He was a lecturer of religion at St. John’s University, New York during the same year and a visiting professor of religion at Siena College, Albany in 2001. He is the recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for a study covering the prophecies against the Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible.