The Emperor Has No Clothes
August 20, 2024 - Tuesday, Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
Ezekiel 28:1-10
The excerpts from Ezekiel that we hear today come from a larger portion of his book called "Oracles against the Nations" (Ezekiel 25-32). There are seven nations mentioned in the oracles: Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt, which were Israel's neighbors and most of them were considered Israel's enemies.
Ammon (Ez 25:1-7) and Moab (Ez 25:8-11) fought on the side of Babylon against Judah (2 Kings 24:1-2), and Edom seemed to assist in the destruction of the temple (Ps 137:7). The Philistines (Ez 25:15-17) were often at war with Israel (Judges 3:31; 1 Sam 4:1ff), and Queen Jezebel, who married Israel's king Ahab and introduced the worship of Baal, came from Sidon (Ez 28:24-26; see 1 Kings 16:29-34). Egypt acted against God's will by offering the Judeans false hopes of help against the Babylonians (Ez 29-32). Finally, there is Tyre, the city-state that Ezekiel focuses on today.
Tyre (Ez 26:1-28:19) was a maritime power of the ancient world. It was an island and thus well protected against any attack. The location gave them a sense of security and pride. Not even the mighty king of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar, could conquer it. However, after 13 years of siege, he forced the city to submit to Babylon. The city was finally conquered in 332 BC by Alexander the Great.
At the heart of Ezekiel's condemnation of Tyre is pride. "A god am I! I occupy a godly throne in the heart of the sea!" (Ezekiel 28:2). We hear the echo of humanity's temptation "to be like God" (Gen. 3:5). This claim was prevalent among ancient monarchs, from Egyptian Pharaohs to Chinese emperors. We see that pride in the Babylonian project of building a tower to the sky (Gen. 11:1-9) and in the desire of the kings of that empire to be equal to God: "I will make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14). The biblical author's insistence, "you are a man, and not a god," strips ancient monarchs of their presumed divinity and makes them equal to their subjects, who were supposed to worship them.
This temptation and the delusion it creates among those intoxicated with power have been captured by Hans Christian Andersen in the tale "The Emperor's New Clothes." A vain emperor is deceived by two swindlers claiming to make him an invisible suit that only wise people can see. The emperor and his ministers, not wanting to appear foolish, pretend to see the clothes, even though they see nothing. The emperor ends up walking naked in a parade, but nobody dares to say anything except a child. Since then, the child's exclamation, "the Emperor has no clothes," describes someone pretending to be something they are not. And that is what the king of Tyre was doing: pretending to be a god, although he was just a man.
At this moment, it is worth reminding ourselves of the ancient Christian hymn of Jesus' humility. If man wants to be a god, to make himself like the Most High, Jesus Christ went in the opposite direction: "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:6-7). Jesus teaches us what it means to be truly human, and it should be the aim of our life to imitate Him, to be like Christ.