Like the prophecy of Tyre?
Tyre was a prominent seaport of Phoenicia that had dealt treacherously with ancient Israel, her southern neighbor that worshiped Jehovah. Through a prophet named Ezekiel, Jehovah foretold its complete destruction over 250 years before it happened. Jehovah declared: “I will bring up against you
many nations . . . And they will certainly bring the walls of Tyre to ruin and tear down her towers, and I will scrape her dust away from her and make her a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what she will become in the midst of the sea.” Ezekiel also named in advance the first nation and its leader to besiege Tyre: “Here I am bringing against Tyre Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon.”—Ezekiel 26:3-5, 7.
As foretold, Nebuchadrezzar [Nebuchadnezzar] did later overthrow mainland Tyre, The Encyclopædia Britannica reporting “a 13-year siege . . . by Nebuchadrezzar.” After the siege it was reported that he took no spoils: “As for wages, there proved to be none for him.” (Ezekiel 29:18) Why not? Because part of Tyre was on an island across a narrow channel. Most of Tyre’s treasures had been transferred from the mainland to that island part of the city, which was not destroyed.
But Nebuchadrezzar’s conquest did not “scrape [Tyre’s] dust away from her and make her a shining, bare surface” as Ezekiel had foretold. Nor was Zechariah’s prophecy fulfilled, which said that Tyre would be pitched “into the sea.” (Zechariah 9:4) Were these prophecies inaccurate? Not at all. Over 250 years after Ezekiel’s prophecy and nearly 200 years after Zechariah’s, Tyre was totally destroyed by Greek armies under Alexander the Great, in 332 B.C.E. “With the debris of the mainland portion of the city,” explains the Encyclopedia Americana, “he built a huge [causeway] in 332 to join the island to the mainland. After a seven months’ siege . . . he captured and destroyed Tyre.”
Today “as with much of what was once Phoenicia, little remains of the great cities that stood at the center of this ancient maritime power. None of the original buildings they lived in and temples they built are still standing, and there is no great wealth of art depicting exactly how they lived. In fact, it has taken chance and persistent digging just to uncover some of the foundation traces of these intrepid people, despite the once heralded majesty of their municipalities. And, albeit informative, what has been physically brought to light does not pack the same kind of punch that tripping through Pompeii or the Roman Forum does.” -
Phoenicia
Thus, as predicted by Ezekiel and Zechariah, Tyre’s dust and debris did end up in the midst of the water. She was left a bare crag, “a place to spread nets upon”. So, prophecies spoken hundreds of years earlier were fulfilled in exact detail thus proving that the Bible is of, not human, but divine origin!
