Lebanon

Lebanon is famous for its mountains, its wine, and, of course, its trees—the cedars of Lebanon. In Bible times, these were cut, shipped south to Joppa and then transported up to Jerusalem to build Solomon’s Temple. The cedars are on the modern Lebanese flag.

Lebanon is mentioned about 65 times in the Bible. The coastal area was one from which the original invading Israelites couldn’t expel the inhabitants (Judges 1:4). The prophet Elijah was sustained by a woman of Zarephath, a city on the coast of Lebanon (I Kings 17:8-24). Jesus mentioned this in the New Testament, where the city is called Sarepta (Luke 4:26). Ancient Zarephath/Sarepta is near the modern city of Sarafand.

Some say that Tyre dates as far back as 3,000 BC. It is mentioned many times in the Bible—at least 74 times in the Old Testament and at least 12 times in the New Testament. Sometimes it is called Tyrus. Many passages mention Tyre and Sidon together. Tyre is mentioned about 39 times and Sidon 13. Jesus spent time in that region. It is where he cast a demon out of the daughter of a Syropheonician woman (Mark 7:24-30).

Present-day Tyre is Lebanon’s third largest city and has approximately 117,000 inhabitants. It is a peninsula city, which is what makes it very different than any other city along the coast. However, it was not always a peninsula. In 1,000 BC, Hirum, King of Tyre, who is mentioned in the Bible (II Samuel 5:11), evidently expanded the mainland city to include two small islands.

By 815 BC, Tyre had become an international trading wonder with colonies around the Mediterranean Sea. Early in the 6th century BC, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege of Tyre for 13 years. It was at that time that mainland residents may have fled to island areas off the coast to avoid being captured.

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great, took the city. He massacred 30,000 and sold others into slavery. In 64 BC, Tyre fell to the Romans, who conquered all of Syria as well. Later, Tyre was under Byzantium Christianity. In 634 AD, Muslim armies conquered it. Then came the Crusaders, the Mamelukes from Egypt, and finally the Ottoman Turks, who ruled until World War I. After World War I, Tyre became part of the new country of Lebanon under the British Mandate.

Ezekiel 26-29 mentions Tyre 13 times. In Ezek. 26:2-7, the city is described as “broken” and “laid waste.” Nations would come up against the city, destroy the walls and break down towers. The dust of the city would be scraped up, and it would be a place for drying nets. Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar would attack the city.

As previously mentioned, about 600 BC, the king of Babylon did just that. The other part of that prophecy remained unfulfilled for 300 years. I imagine people sneered saying God didn’t know what he was talking about. How could Tyre, a fabulous trading metropolis on the coast, be scraped up and cast into the sea?

In 332, Alexander the Great wanted Tyre. By then, it was located on an island, and he was unable to take the city. Alexander scraped up the timbers, dust and stones of old Tyre on the mainland and built a causeway out into the sea moving his battering ram along. He took the city, and the carnage was terrible. The rubble he dumped into the sea eventually became a place where fishermen dried their nets. Tyre fell exactly as Ezekiel prophesied. It may take hundreds of years, but God’s Word will always be fulfilled.

If Tyre stands as a fabulous element of fulfillment, then the Bible is also true about Christ, salvation, heaven, hell, and redemption through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

One of the great passages of Satan’s origin and doom is in Ezekiel 28. Tyre excelled and was the merchandizing wonder of the ancient world trading far and wide. Persia (Iran), Mesech (thought to be Russia), Dedan (probably Saudi Arabia), to name a few, traded with Tyre. Behind all this was the Devil himself, and the sin of Satanic pride was rampant. In fact, Tyre considered itself god-like. Finally, God said that was enough.

But not all that is written about Tyre in the Bible is bad. Going back in history to the time of David and Solomon, there was a king in Tyre named Hiram who had great affection for David (II Sam. 5:11). Hiram sent him the famed cedar trees of Lebanon along with carpenters and masons to build his house. When David died, Hiram continued to aid his son, Solomon.

I Kings 5 describes how Hiram sent cedar and cypress to Solomon for the great new Temple. I Kings 5:9 and II Chronicles 2:16 tell how these huge logs were floated down the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea to Joppa and then transported by land to Jerusalem. Later, when the temple was rebuilt by order of Cyrus, King of Persia (modern Iran), they did this again (Ezra 3:7).

I Kings 5:12 shows that there was a peace treaty between Solomon and Hiram. It was the great era of friendship and commerce between the two kingdoms, but it was a strange situation that the King of Tyre was dealing with the King of Jerusalem.

The original land grant given to the Israelites would have included Tyre (Genesis 15:18–21), and a good part of what is now Lebanon was originally given to the tribe of Asher (Joshua 19:24). Asher’s tribal land went farther than Tyre up to Sidon. Shouldn’t that have been part of the territory of David’s reign?

The Sidonians were Canaanites, and that general area was known as Phoenicia. The Canaanites included many different people according to Gen. 10:15. These sons of Canaan, who was a grandson of Noah, included the Sidonians, the Hethites and the Jebusites plus others. Their land went from Sidon to Gaza. The Jebusites were in the area of what we now call Jerusalem. The Gaza area became known as Philistia.

When the tribes came into the land under Joshua, they were to totally subdue those peoples. But Judges 2 says that the Israelites could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley. The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, and Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco or Zidon or a number of other cities.

The result was that God said that He would not drive out these people and that they would be thorns in their side (Judges 2:1-3). God left those nations in the land because Israel disobeyed (Judges 2:20-23). Several of these areas are specifically listed in Judges 3:1-5, namely, five lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites.

Incomplete obedience to the Lord cost Israel exclusive control of Gaza, which is the area of the Palestinian mess today, and it cost them any control of the area of Lebanon, now a hotbed of terrorism with Hezbollah. It also cost them complete control of Jerusalem. The Muslims have control of the Temple Mount, and the city is tragically divided.

God is teaching us a very important lesson in bringing these cities into the focus of modern war. Incomplete obedience results in incomplete blessing.