Catholic Commentary
The Catalogue of Nations: Tyre's Global Trading Partners (Part 1)
12“‘“Tarshish was your merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches. They traded for your wares with silver, iron, tin, and lead.13“‘“Javan, Tubal, and Meshech were your traders. They traded the persons of men and vessels of bronze for your merchandise.14“‘“They of the house of Togarmah traded for your wares with horses, war horses, and mules.15“‘“The men of Dedan traded with you. Many islands were the market of your hand. They brought you horns of ivory and ebony in exchange.16“‘“Syria was your merchant by reason of the multitude of your handiworks. They traded for your wares with emeralds, purple, embroidered work, fine linen, coral, and rubies.17“‘“Judah and the land of Israel were your traders. They traded wheat of Minnith, confections, honey, oil, and balm for your merchandise.18“‘“Damascus was your merchant for the multitude of your handiworks by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches, with the wine of Helbon, and white wool.
Ezekiel 27:12–19 catalogs Tyre's vast international trade networks, listing the goods and peoples it exchanges with across the Mediterranean and Near East. The passage portrays Tyre as the commercial center of the ancient world, profiting from luxury commodities while implicitly condemning the spiritual cost of wealth accumulation, including the trade in enslaved persons and instruments of war.
Tyre's vast trading empire—spanning continents and commodities—reveals the spiritual danger of a civilization that measures itself by what it buys and sells, not by what it believes.
Commentary
Ezekiel 27:12 — Tarshish: Tarshish is most likely ancient Tartessus in southern Spain (or possibly Sardinia), the westernmost reach of the known world in Ezekiel's day. Its association with silver, iron, tin, and lead — the great industrial metals of antiquity — marks it as a source of raw material wealth. Tyre did not merely receive luxury goods; it processed, refined, and re-exported them, functioning as the financial clearinghouse of the ancient Mediterranean. The phrase "multitude of all kinds of riches" (Hebrew rōb kol-hôn) recurs throughout the lament and functions as a refrain of dangerous abundance.
Ezekiel 27:13 — Javan, Tubal, and Meshech: Javan is Ionia (Greece); Tubal and Meshech correspond to peoples of Asia Minor (roughly modern Turkey), later also identified with northern barbarian nations. Critically, their trade commodity includes "persons of men" — that is, slaves. This is the first and most damning item in the human ledger. Ezekiel does not editorialize, but the placement of enslaved human beings alongside "vessels of bronze" in a commercial inventory is itself a devastating moral indictment. Catholic social teaching, rooted in the dignity of the human person (imago Dei), recognizes this trafficking as a primordial violation of the divine order.
Ezekiel 27:14 — Togarmah: The house of Togarmah (Genesis 10:3) likely refers to peoples of Armenia or the Caucasus, known for horse breeding. Horses, war horses (parashim), and mules represent not merely agricultural assets but military capital. Tyre's commerce literally fueled the wars of nations. The prophet subtly implicates Tyre in the violence of its age: it is a merchant of instruments of destruction.
Ezekiel 27:15 — Dedan and the Islands: Dedan is in northwestern Arabia (modern Saudi Arabia). The "many islands" (iyyim rabbim) likely refers to the coastlands of the Aegean or Persian Gulf. Ivory and ebony — luxury materials associated with royal prestige and temple furnishing — evoke the opulence that Tyre both supplied and symbolized. The prophet's inventory technique forces the listener to visualize the physical weight of Tyre's wealth.
Ezekiel 27:16 — Syria (Aram): Syria traded emeralds, purple dye (argaman), embroidered work, fine linen, coral (rāmōt), and rubies (nōphek). This cluster of commodities is significant: purple and fine linen are the very fabrics associated in Scripture with priestly vestments (Exodus 28) and later with royal excess and sinful luxury (Luke 16:19; Revelation 18). The list sonically overwhelms — it is meant to induce a kind of dizziness, mimicking the seductive excess of Tyre itself.
Ezekiel 27:17 — Judah and Israel: The painful irony reaches its sharpest edge here. God's own covenant people, Judah and Israel, are trading partners in Tyre's empire of wealth — supplying wheat from Minnith (a region east of the Jordan), confections (pannag, perhaps a spiced pastry or resin), honey, oil, and balm. The holy land, whose produce was meant to be a sign of covenant blessing (Deuteronomy 8:7–9), has been reduced to a commodity supplier for a pagan mercantile empire. Israel is not exempt from the web; it is entangled in it. The balm of Gilead, elsewhere a symbol of healing and divine provision (Jeremiah 8:22), is here merely an export item.
Ezekiel 27:18 — Damascus: Wine of Helbon (a prized vintage near Damascus, famously exported to Persian royalty) and white wool (ṣemer ṣāḥar, possibly the brilliant white fleece of a specific Syrian breed) continue the catalogue of sensory abundance. Damascus, the great inland caravan city, connects Tyre to the deep interior of the Levant.
Ezekiel 27:19 — Vedan and Javan: The exact identification of "Vedan" remains disputed — possibly Aden in Yemen, a variant of Dedan, or a north Arabian locale. Javan here may refer to a different regional Javan than in v.13. The trade goods — wrought iron, cassia (an aromatic spice), and calamus (a fragrant reed) — again combine the martial (iron) with the sensory (spices), war and pleasure intertwined in a single trading ledger.
Typological sense: The lament over Tyre functions typologically throughout Christian tradition as a figure of the Whore of Babylon in Revelation 17–18, and more broadly as a type of any civilization that substitutes commerce for covenant, acquisition for adoration. The extraordinary parallel between this passage and Revelation 18:11–13 (which reproduces nearly the same inventory of luxury goods, ending again with "bodies and souls of men") confirms this typological reading. Tyre is not merely an ancient city; it is a perennial spiritual condition.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads the lament over Tyre not merely as political history but as a profound theological disclosure about the nature of created wealth and its corruption. St. Jerome, commenting on Ezekiel, recognized Tyre's commerce as a figure of the soul entangled in worldly desires, each trading partner representing a different concupiscent attachment that draws the soul away from God. St. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia in Job, uses the imagery of merchant nations to describe how spiritual pride assembles its wealth from the vanities of the world, building an identity on perishable goods rather than on God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "a theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable" (CCC 2424) and explicitly condemns slavery and the trafficking of persons as violations of the seventh and fifth commandments respectively (CCC 2414). The appearance of enslaved persons in verse 13 alongside bronze vessels is precisely the category confusion that Catholic social teaching, rooted in Gaudium et Spes §27, identifies as intrinsically evil: treating persons as commodities.
Pope Francis, in Laudato Si' §195, warns against an "economy of exclusion" in which the logic of the market overrides the dignity of persons and the integrity of creation — a dynamic Ezekiel already anatomizes with surgical precision. Furthermore, the inclusion of Judah and Israel in the trading network (v.17) carries a specific warning for the people of God: participation in unjust economic systems is not neutralized by covenant identity. The Church, as the new Israel, is continuously called to examine whether its institutional and individual economic life conforms to the justice of the Kingdom.
For Today
Ezekiel's exhaustive catalogue invites the contemporary Catholic to conduct a moral inventory of their own economic entanglements. The supply chains that bring us cheap clothing, electronics, or food often involve labor conditions that would appear on Ezekiel's list alongside Tubal and Meshech's slave trade. The prophet's method — listing, naming, making visible — is itself a spiritual discipline. Catholic consumers are not called to paralysis, but to consciousness: to ask who made this, at what cost, and to whose benefit.
More personally, the passage diagnoses a spiritual pathology: the construction of identity through commerce. Just as Tyre was defined by what it bought and sold, modern culture tempts us to define ourselves by our consumption, our brand, our portfolio. Pope Francis's repeated call to "encounter" — with the poor, with the stranger, with the marginalized — is the antidote Ezekiel implicitly points toward. The balm of Gilead (v.17) is still available; the question is whether we will sell it to Tyre or apply it as healing. Practically, Catholics might use this passage as an examination of conscience around spending, investment, and support for businesses that traffic in human dignity.
Cross-References