In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned: The abundance of your trade refers to the widespread and successful business empire that Tyre had under its great king. Trade is buying and selling (see Ezek 28.5). In the process of this trade Tyre’s king became filled with violence and sinned. The Hebrew word for violence in the Bible usually refers to social injustice, where rich and powerful members of society take advantage of the poor and treat them unfairly (see 7.11). Here the word for sinned means missing the mark, making a mistake, doing something wrong (see the comments on 14.13). The implication of the first two lines of this verse seems to be that the extensive trade of Tyre led its king to become unjust and sinful. Translators may say “All the trading you did caused you to sin and treat people unjustly.”

So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God: This line means more than simply “So I forced you to leave my holy mountain” (Good News Translation; similarly Contemporary English Version). It has the idea of God sending away the king of Tyre in “shame” (New International Reader’s Version) or “disgrace” (New International Version, New Living Translation, New Century Version, Revised English Bible) from the place where God lives because he was ritually unclean. For the mountain of God, see verse 14. This line may be rendered “Therefore I drove you away from my mountain because you were not fit to be there.”

And the guardian cherub drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire: In verse 14 Revised Standard Version understands that God placed the cherub in the garden as a guardian of the king (see the comments there). So here it is possible for the cherub to drive the king out of the garden (so also New Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, New Century Version, Revised English Bible, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, Moffatt, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). But a better interpretation of verse 14 is that God made the king a guardian cherub of the garden, so here it is not possible for the king to drive himself out. It is better to treat guardian cherub as a vocative expression, referring to the king; for example, New International Version renders these two lines as “and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones” (similarly New International Reader’s Version, New Living Translation, King James Version / New King James Version, New American Standard Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). This understanding is confirmed by the Hebrew verb here which is clearly in the first person with God as the actor. For the stones of fire, see verse 14.

A model for this verse is:

• When your trade [buying and selling] became big, you began to treat people unfairly, and you did wrong. Because you became ritually unclean, I banished you from the mountain where I live [or, the mountain of the gods]. You, the guarding angel, I drove you out from that place that is surrounded by shining jewels.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .