28:11 The word of the LORD came to me: 28:12 “Son of man, sing a lament for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘This is what the sovereign LORD says:
“ ‘You were the sealer of perfection,
full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
28:13 You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Every precious stone was your covering,
the ruby, topaz, and emerald,
the chrysolite, onyx, and jasper,
the sapphire, turquoise, and beryl;
your settings and mounts were made of gold.
On the day you were created they were prepared.
28:14 I placed you there with an anointed guardian cherub;
you were on the holy mountain of God;
you walked about amidst fiery stones.
28:15 You were blameless in your behavior from the day you were created,
until sin was discovered in you.
28:16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned;
so I defiled you and banished you from the mountain of God—
the guardian cherub expelled you from the midst of the stones of fire.
28:17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom on account of your splendor.
I threw you down to the ground;
I placed you before kings, that they might see you.
28:18 By the multitude of your iniquities, through the sinfulness of your trade,
you desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I drew fire out from within you;
it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth
before the eyes of all who saw you.
28:19 All who know you among the peoples are shocked at you;
you have become terrified and will be no more.’ ”

Ezekiel 28 contains two prophecies against ‘the king of Tyre’. In the first, Eze 28:2-9 the king is clearly identified as a ‘man’, although he arrogantly thinks of himself as a god. But the second, Eze 28:11-19, seems from the very beginning to point beyond the human king.

Verses 11-19 are thought, particularly by some in the early church and, in more recent times, by Dispensationalist writers (such as Wiersbe and the Scofield Reference Bible), to refer to Satan (cf. Isa 14:12-17).  They appeal to the extravagant language, which (they claim) is scarcely applicable to any mere human king.  The passage would then have a double referent – to the King of Tyre, and to Satan, whose malice lay behind that king.

Origen (ACCS)

‘These statements…from the prophet Ezekiel concerning the prince of Tyre must relate, as we have shown, to an adverse power, and they prove in the clearest manner that this power was originally holy and blessed, and that he fell from this state of blessedness and was cast down into the earth “from the time that iniquity was found in him” and that his fallen condition was not due to his nature or creation. We consider, therefore, that these statements refer to some angel, to whom had been allotted the duty of supervising the Tyrian people, whose souls also were apparently committed to his care.’

Wiersbe:

‘As you read these verses, you get the impression that this “king” is much more than a human regent and that this could be a description of Satan. That Satan wants to control nations and their leaders is clear from 1 Chronicles 21 and Daniel 9, and Matthew 4:8–10 states that he has delegated authority to dispose of the nations.’

Thompson (Cornerstone Biblical Commentary), however, demurs:

‘In spite of its appeal to many conservative Christians, the construal of chapter 28 as an account of a satanic “fall” fails because of its inability to account for the plain historical references in the immediate context that tie the two oracles squarely to the king of Tyre.’

Leslie C. Allen notes that the above interpretation was promoted by a number of teachers in the early church.  But:

‘The application of vv 11–19 to Satan by third and fourth century A.D. Church Fathers, Tertullian, Origen, John Cassian, Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome, and thence in some modern popular conservative expositions, is based on MT’s equation of the king and cherub and on comparison with Isa 14:12–15. It is a case of exegeting an element of Christian belief by means of Scripture and so endeavoring to provide it with extrabiblical warrant and to fit the passage into the framework of the Christian faith. However, it is guilty of detaching the passage from its literary setting.’

Certainly, this passage has many allusions to Gen 2 and 3.  In the view of Wright, Ezekiel is:

‘using the language of the creation stories as a metaphorical device to convey the great height from which the king of Tyre would fall.’

Wright suggests that the story of the Fall in Genesis can be regarded as prototypical:

‘Ezekiel’s free use here of motifs from the Genesis stories indicates that even in his day they could be understood not only as explanatory narratives for the historical origin of the human condition, but also as prototypical of subsequent human experience. That is, the narrative of the fall was not only something that happened to Adam and Eve; it describes a reality that recurs again and again in human history. The fall of a contemporary potentate in the sixth century BC could be described in terms drawn from the story of the original fall of the primeval pair.’