Chapter 29. The Sidonians
So great was Sidon that the book of Joshuaentitled Sidon as the “Great Zidon.” Sidon’s daughter city was Tyre in Joshua’s time, not yet the lead city of the Sidon pentapolis but a powerful military city-state described as the “strong city Tyre,” along with Zidon and Hamath. Strong/mibtsar means a castle, fortress, stronghold, and fenced city, and is the same word that described the stronghold cities with walls up to the sky in the reconnaissance report by the Israelite scouts into Canaan. Fenced cities of the Old Testament were built on hills with “solid masonry,” watchtowers at regular intervals, parapets, and an almost impregnable acropolis in the city center. Tyre may have been greater than the fortress city-states conquered in the northern campaign by Joshua—city-states with fences/mibstar such as Hamath, Hazor, and Chinnereth with their villages.
Phoenician tomb inscriptions describe a lineage of kings who represented themselves as the earthly representatives of gods—demigod kings like Huram/Hiram of Tyre, Abibaal, Shiptiball, and Elibaal of Gebal/Byblos, and of course the infamous prince of Tyre, Tyrus (Ezek 28). Some conclude Iy’anaq/Anakim King Akirum of the Egyptian Execration Textswas an archaic form of the Phoenician name Ahiram or Hiram. Further, the reference in the Execration Textsto “Asiatics of Byblos” addressed the Phoenician empire as reigned by Iy’anaq/Anakim kings, which included Akirum and King Abi-yamimu. Josephus listed Hiram’s father as Abibalus (Abibaal), indicating another Rephaim patronymic king title nexus. Strong’s Cyclopaedia listed kings of Tyre who reigned before the Exodus as those “whose very names mostly prove them to be mere types of deities, or special tribes”: Aegenor, Phoenix, Phallis, Tetramnestus, and Tennes, Strato, and Abd-alonim.
Understanding Tyre’s Rephaim history makes sense of the dual prophecy in Ezekiel 32 where King Tyrus was portrayed as an archetypical antichrist figure like Nimrod, the Assyrian, and the king of Babylon/Babel in prophetic allegory…
