. . . Yet one must at the same
time remember how the description of the angelic being on the mountain of God
is employed merely as an allegory for the king of Tyre and did not carry with
it any force to compel Ezekiel to follow slavishly the lines of the myth. All
that he was aiming at was to portray the unique position of the prince of the
glittering commercial city in the colours of the myth, so as to display the
enormity of his sin and the terrible change in his destiny. That he now
stresses, with reference to the earthly city of Tyre, whose importance depended
upon its world-wide trade, both the deeds of violence which so often accompany
commerce, and also the whole commercial policy which has no scruples about
injustice, but concerns itself only with heaping up gains, and claims that this
is the source of all error, is sufficiently justified by the concrete object of
the lament. Beauty and wisdom, according to v. 17, also give occasion for
error. They are more closely connected with the traditions about the primal
man, but at this point are not so central. The deceitfulness of riches is the
actual reason leading to contempt for the will of God, and that again turns
beauty and wisdom into a snare. So the profaner of the mountain of God is
spoiled of his dignity by God himself and expelled from the heavenly sphere. As
in the Paradise story, the protecting cherub performs the act which finally
separates him from the shining divine abode (v. 16). God casts him down to
earth from the heights of heaven, i.e. he reduces the king who enjoys such high
regard to a miserable helpless creature, whom the kings who used to fawn upon
him now treat with contempt. (Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel [trans. Cosslett
Quin; Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1970], 394-95)
