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Welcome to the Cross References podcast on the Book of Ezekiel. In this study, you learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and most importantly, how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
Whether you’re a newbie Christian or a veteran Bible reader, my goal is that God’s Word will make more sense to you after every episode.
Host: Luke Taylor
Do Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 Speak of the Devil?
Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14
Ezekiel series, Part 47
Introduction
Lots of people believe God is real. Even if they aren’t really Christians, lots of people believe that there’s a God. But if you also believe in a devil, that makes you a little more unique. There are even Christian theologians and pastors who will try to tell you that there isn’t a devil, that demons aren’t real, that it’s all a superstition.
And when you come to Ezekiel 28- one of the chapters in the Bible that gives us the most information about the devil- they will try to explain it as being about a merely human ruler.
And that’s how Ezekiel 28 starts off, sure. Last week on this podcast, we studied the first part of Ezekiel 28, the part about the human ruler of Tyre, an ancient nation that God destroyed. And this time we’re going to look at the spiritual ruler of Tyre- which, believe it or not, was the devil himself.
If you listen through today, you’ll hear a case for why Ezekiel 28 is surely talking about the devil, and why this chapter is talking about him. All that today on the Cross References podcast.
[theme music]
(Continued)
Welcome to the Cross References podcast, where you learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and most importantly, how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
Whether you’re a new Christian or a veteran Bible reader, my goal is that God’s Word will make more sense to you after every episode.
My name is Luke Taylor, and I’m a soldier. Not in any earthly kingdom, but I’m a soldier in God’s army. And if I’m going to fight for God’s Kingdom, I need to know my enemy. So over the next few lessons we’re going to discuss our spiritual enemy, the devil, and how to defeat him.
We started last week by making the simple point that the devil is wiser than you. And that’s not likely to change anytime soon, because you’ve been around for a matter of decades, but the devil has been around for millennia. So we’re outmatched- on our own. But praise the Lord, we are not on our own. God has given us a book with the information we need to win this fight.
Now, as I said a few moments ago, the one of the chapters that speaks the most descriptively about this enemy is also a little bit veiled. It doesn’t directly say “This is about Satan” in its verses. So that makes it a little bit controversial. But I hope to bring some clarity today and demonstrate that these verses in Ezekiel 28 could be about no one other than Satan.
Ezekiel 28, Speak of the Devil
So this time I just want to establish the figure of the verses in Ezekiel 28, and next time we’ll talk about what they mean. Specifically, we’ll look at verses 11 through 19. Last time, we looked at verses 1-10. Those were about the human ruler of the nation of Tyre. If you’ve been following this podcast, you know that Tyre is a maritime nation that was very sophisticated, very wealthy, very much an economic backbone of the middle east. But they were prideful and sinful, so God said He would destroy it anyway. All nations in the area would suffer if Tyre fell, but that didn’t matter, God was going to make sure Tyre paid for its sins. People thought Tyre was impenetrable, because it moved its capitol out to an island, and how can you lead a siege against an island? But Alexander the Great figured it out, and he conquered Tyre.
So verses 1-10 have God speaking to the king of Tyre, the human king, but in verses 11-19, God shifts to talking about the spiritual king of Tyre. The power behind the throne. And God says this:
Ezekiel 28:11-12
11 Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me: 12 “Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:
“You were the signet of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
Now right there it’s like: woah. That’s a little over the top. Why would the human king be called perfect in beauty?
Verse 13
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering
And then it goes over the stones, which we won’t do today.
So this says that the King of Tyre was very beautiful, that he was wise, and that he was in Eden. Now, who could that be about?
Well, let’s talk about how we know was in Eden. There was this guy named Adam. Adam got lonely so God made Him a wife named Eve. God was in Eden, because God walked with Adam and Eve. And then in Genesis 3, another figure appears in Eden, known there as The Serpent.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
And while some will try to say that this was not the devil, just a talking snake. I remember doing an online quiz one time, like 10 years ago, made by an atheist to embarrass Christians, and it had the question: who tempted Eve in the garden? And if you said “the devil,” it would say, “Wrong, the Bible never says in Genesis 3 that the serpent is the devil; it’s just a talking snake.”
Well, Christians believe the whole bible, including
Revelation 20:1-2, where it says
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years
And I love the symmetry of the Bible. In the third chapter of the Bible, we meet the serpent. It’s pretty obvious to most of us who that serpent is. But then at the end of the Bible- three chapters from the end- the devil is brought up again, and it specifically calls him “that ancient serpent” or “that serpent of old.” Making it clear as can be for us that this is talking about the same dude.
So let’s get back to Ezekiel 28. Is this figure the serpent just because it says that the person of Ezekiel 28 was in the garden of Eden? Because there are a few candidates. There are some who try to say that the new figure introduced in Ezekiel 28 is not Satan, but Adam. They admit that the description doesn’t apply to the human king of Tyre, because it can’t fit. But they stop short of saying it’s about Satan. They say that it applies to someone else that was in Eden: Adam. They say that these verses must apply to Adam because he was also perfect up until he sinned. But let’s hold that up next to:
Verse 14
You were an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
A cherub is a type of spiritual being. We might commonly call them angels, although I’m not calling it an angel; I’m saying it’s a cherub. It’s a spiritual being like an angel, but I think they’re a little bit different from mere angels. Cherubs are depicted in the Bible as the guardians of God’s presence. We’ve already seen them a few times in Ezekiel, when God’s appeared before Ezekiel back in chapter 1, and again when Ezekiel sees God’s presence leave the temple of God in chapter 10.
So this knocks out Adam, Eve and God from being the figure mentioned in Ezekiel 28. I’m not aware of any other personalities who were in Eden who could be a candidate for this description.
It is very commonly said that Satan was an angel who was kicked out of heaven. That’s fine to say that, but a more specific term we can use would be “cherub.” As I’ve also covered on previous episodes of this podcast, a cherub is a spiritual being with wings and the face of a cow or an ox- a bovine-like face. Satan looks like a cow.
Nachash - the shining serpent
Something else about Satan is that he’s very bright. Luminescent. I kinda skipped over the stones mentioned before, but let me go back to them now.
Ezekiel 28:13
every precious stone was your covering,
sardius, topaz, and diamond,
beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;
and crafted in gold were your settings
and your engravings.
There are a few places in scripture that mention lots of gemstones like this. This brings to mind the priestly garments in Leviticus, as well as the description of heaven at the end of Revelation. Things being very bright, sparkly and pretty. And they’re mentioned here as being what covered Satan as well.
Does that make some kind of connection between Satan and the priesthood? Not necessarily. I think this is just a way that God makes some things look beautiful in His Kingdom. And so for the priests to minister to God, they were told to beautify themselves in a similar way. And for Satan, it has already said earlier that he was perfect in beauty when God created him.
Theologian Michael Heiser, who passed away last year, said this about this passage:
The gemstones, in my view, are not about the high priest. They are descriptors of shining-ness, luminescence. They do not correspond with precision to the high priests’ breastplate, they just don’t. Some of them do, some of them don’t. Rather, some of this description- fiery stones, shining stones, gemstones, are stock descriptions of divine beings in the ancient world.
So what do the gemstones have to do with proving that this is the devil? Well, let’s go to Genesis 3 again. Let’s go back to the original Hebrew as it describes the serpent.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
By the way, “crafty.” It means cunning. Smart. Wise. We went deep into how that word is used to describe Satan in the last episode. Satan is really really really really smart. You will not outsmart him. But read II Corinthians 2:11. If you know his strategies, you can protect yourself from being deceived. We’ll get there in one of the next few lessons, but we’ll stay in Genesis 3 for the moment.
Now, this word “serpent” in this chapter is the Hebrew word nachash. (Pronounced Naw-Kosh). Spelled N-A-C-H-A-S-H. My autocorrect wants to change it to nachos. My stomach is also now thinking about nachos, and I’m sorry if yours is, too. The nachash is the serpent of Genesis 3.
A serpent is also known as a snake. It’s a reptilian animal, which is also how Satan is described in Revelation- a dragon. I’m no zoologist, but I’m pretty sure that a dragon would also be a reptile.
Now, I don’t think that the devil possessed an actual snake in Genesis 3. I would say that he probably took on the physical form of a snake, but I don’t think the Eve mistook him for a snake. I think she knew that Satan was one of God’s spiritual beings. This is my personal read. Some teach that animals could just naturally talk before the fall of man, and that it was an ordinary thing to have a conversation with a snake, and that’s why Eve is just cool with doing that in Genesis 3. That’s a possibility, but I have an alternative theory: that she recognizes Satan as one of God’s spiritual beings, that Adam and Eve were well-acquainted with spiritual beings, and that Satan was one of them, and so they just assumed that they could trust him. And this was before the fall, so the fact that he was appearing as a snake didn’t freak her out, because she had no reason to fear or be suspicious of snakes, like we would.
But I believe this Hebrew word nachash is doing a lot of work, because it’s one of those Hebrew words that has multiple meanings. Another translation of nachash is “the shining one.” And that is a characteristic of Satan- he is described in the Bible as bright and shiny. And that is what these gemstones are all about: giving off a shiny light. And if you think about it, that also matches the New Testament description of Satan:
II Corinthians 11:14
for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
Nachash has a third meaning, by the way. This is a powerful word with a lot of meaning. The word nachash can be used as a verb to mean to give divination, or to give information from the spiritual realm. This word nachash can be used in three ways:
As a noun to mean a serpent
As a verb to mean to give spiritual information
As an adjective to mean a shining one
And all of these words describe who satan is and what he’s doing when he shows up here in Genesis 3. He is showing up as a shiny serpent who is claiming to have secret information from the spiritual realm: eat this fruit and become like God.
And so I think all of this synergy is helping to build the case that Ezekiel 28 is definitely speaking of Satan.
Great Balls of Fire
But if you want just a little bit more proof, lemme just keep going.
Ezekiel 28:15-17
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created,
till unrighteousness was found in you.
In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire.
Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
Now I’ll stop there. So we see that Satan was perfect until he wasn’t anymore. He became prideful and was cast away from the stones of fire.
We know that pride is one of the chief characteristics of Satan. Of the Antichrist as well, by the way. But we’ll stick to Satan for today, and he is often mentioned as being full of pride. In fact, he was so prideful, he wanted to occupy God’s throne and receive the worship that was meant to go to God.
Isaiah 14 talks about Satan; it says in verses 12 and 13:
12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
Satan’s goal was to receive the worship of God. So he was cast out of heaven. Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Which means God must have backhanded him pretty hard. Or he had Michael do it. However it happened, Satan got kicked out. Now, I think he’s still allowed to make return visits, but we’ll get into that on a future lesson.
And this connects further with the curse on the serpent in
Genesis 3:14
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
He had wanted to be like in the place of “the most high.” But he was cast to become the lowest of the low.
One last detail I want to mention today from Ezekiel 28 was where it said:
I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire.
The stones of fire is not a phrase that appears in other places in the Bible, to my knowledge. But it is in the book of Enoch. It’s up to you how much credibility you want to give the book of Enoch, but listeners of my other podcast- Weird Stuff in the Bible- may know that the Bible frequently cites this book as a place of reliable information.
And in that book, the stones of fire refers to the meeting place of the Divine Council. Satan was perhaps privy to the meetings of the Divine Council in the past, but when he transgressed, he lost his seat.
Now, as I said, I think he can come back and have conversations with God in heaven. In fact, I think Satan is given control over certain sectors of humanity from time to time. We’ll talk about that as we close down today. Let’s take a short break. I hope I’ve convincingly explained beyond a shadow of a doubt THAT Ezekiel 28 is talking about Satan. But WHY is Ezekiel 28 talking about Satan. That’s what I’ll discuss as we close down today…
[music]
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, we will study Ezekiel 28 some more. Today wasn’t even the verse-by-verse Bible teaching; I was just trying to establish who Ezekiel 28 was talking about. Next time, I want to tell you what it means. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
On Weird Stuff in the Bible, I’m also talking about the devil, with an episode coming out on Wednesday called God Uses Satan. If you ever looked at all the death, destruction and misery going on in the world and wondered why God even allows Satan to still exist, that’s an episode you’ll want to hear. Make sure you’re subscribed to Weird Stuff in the Bible.
Email: crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com
This podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, Edify, and Youtube. And Rumble. I almost decided to cut Rumble off because I get almost no response from Rumble. And then I checked the other day and one of my episodes had like 400 downloads on Rumble. And that was weird because that same episode on Youtube had like 30. It was an episode that made almost no impact on Youtube, it was an Ezekiel chapter study, and my Ezekiel episodes tend to do a lot better on podcast and kinda fall flat when I put them on Youtube, and even more flat on Rumble. But that episode- it was Ezekiel part 41- it actually has over 500 now, I just checked. So I’ll keep things going on Rumble, I guess.
Closing Thoughts
Now as I close down, I want to mention WHY Ezekiel 28 mentions the devil. Because otherwise, you might have never even heard of Ezekiel 28 before. It’s a very out-of-the-blue reference because nothing about chapters 25 or 26 or 27 had said anything about the devil. I don’t think the next chapter will. This is a section about foreign nations. Prophecies against Ammon and Moab and Edom and Philistia and then Tyre. And in then instead of just going on to the next nation in the lineup, Sidon, instead Ezekiel starts talking about the devil. It’s very bizarre, it comes out of nowhere. Why is it talking about the devil all of a sudden right here?
I have a theory on that, and I think it’s a pretty good theory. If you’re a regular listener to my Weird Stuff in the Bible podcast, you might already be familiar with the concept that God has various spiritual beings placed in charge of various nations. That part’s not a theory; that’s a fact. God is in command of a pantheon on spiritual beings who make up what’s called The Divine Council. They make decisions about the direction of humanity. And so every nation has its own small-g god. The Bible refers to these spiritual authorities as the gods.
And these are both good and bad spiritual beings who are placed in charge of the nations. They’re not all loyal to the one true God. They can rebel and do their own thing. And the leadership over these different sectors of humanity can shift and change from time to time. I think God is always the entity over Israel. But I think the others can be replaced or shuffled around from time to time.
It is my THEORY that Satan had been placed in charge of Tyre at this point in time. I don’t know if he asked for it, or if he was assigned it, I can’t speak to how things work in the spiritual realm with specificity all the time. But I think Satan was given command of Tyre for whatever reason.
And it’s interesting that Tyre was quite different from the other nations that were spoken against in this section of Ezekiel. Ammon and Moab and Edom and Philistia were violent, scary, dangerous desert warriors. Tyre was dignified, wealthy, an economic powerhouse. It was sophisticated. And yet, it was entirely corrupt. And perhaps Satan wanted it because he could do more damage with a nation like Tyre than he could with one of these others. I have no idea. But I believe he was the territorial spirit in control over Tyre at this point in time and directly influencing the human ruler of Tyre.
And who was that human ruler? If you listened to the previous episode that I released last week, you may know that the human rule at this time was a man named King Ethbaal the Third.
Ethbaal is an interesting name. Baal was the deity of the Old Testament that the Israelites were always getting tempted with. And Baal was a bull or a cow. He had the same face that was the face of a cherub, the same face Satan had. I actually went deep into all this on Episode 35 of this podcast; it was called “What Does Satan Look Like?” That was a long time ago so I would forgive you if you can’t remember it. Although it would still hurt my feelings if you ever forgot anything I said, so don’t tell me. But anyway, in that episode I establish that Baal was Satan and that he had the face of a cherub or bovine creature.
And so the King of Tyre that Ezekiel was writing to was named Ethbaal, which means literally, “Baal Is With Him,” which also means “Satan is With Him.” So I believe Satan was controlling Ethbaal like a puppet, and that Satan was the spirit over Tyre, the power behind the throne. And that’s why Ezekiel 28 is talking about him.
And that’s all I really have to say about that. This was important for me to talk about today because this is one of those weasel passages in the Bible; there are a lot of passages that some scholars and theologians and pastors get embarrassed about in the Bible, and a lot of those deal with the devil, and so a lot of interpreters try to weasel their way out of letting the Bible say exactly what it says. And I’m not going to leave room for that as we study the devil more over the next few weeks.
Any passage that teaches us about satan or demons gets run through the ringer until some pastor can cast doubt on what it says and try to tell you that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it sounds like. You can find this with basically any scripture in the Bible that teaches us about the devil. And yet, I don’t think there’s really any ambiguity about it. I think when you take the whole counsel of God, it all hangs together really plainly, and it paints a very clear, consistent picture. Isaiah 14, Genesis 3, Matthew 4, Revelation 20, Ezekiel 28, it’s all the same figure. He is the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan
I hope the Bible makes more sense to you after this episode. I usually end by giving an application but we’ll save it for next time, because we’ve established who Ezekiel 28 is talking about, and now we can re-read those verses and dig into what they mean. And that’s what next week’s episode is gonna be all about. So I hope you’ll be back.
Thanks for listening to the Cross References Podcast. This has been Luke Taylor, and I’m gonna go get some nachos.