Ezekiel 26:20

when I shall bring Rather in connexion with Ezekiel 26:19: when I shall make thee a desolate city … then I shall bring thee down. The prophet regards Tyre's sinking beneath the waters as her entrance upon the descent into the pit, the place of the dead, just as frequently elsewhere (ch. 32) he snakes the grave the entrance into the underworld of the dead. Cf. Isaiah 14:11; Isaiah 14:19.

that descend into the pit Rather: them that are gone down into the pit, unto the people. The common phrase "they that go down to the pit" should be rendered: that are gone down(past). Ezek. always says withthem that are gone down, Ezekiel 28:8; Ezekiel 31:14: cf. Isaiah 14:19; Isaiah 38:18.

The "people of old time" are those dead from of old, Ezekiel 32:27; Lamentations 3:6; Psalms 143:3; hardly with more definite ref. to the Flood, Job 22:15.

low parts of the earth the nether parts, i.e. in the underworld of the dead (Ezekiel 31:14; Ezekiel 32:18-24; Lamentations 3:55; Psalms 63:9), which was held to be situated in the bowels of the earth or under the earth.

in places desolate of old According to the textual tradition (Baer, Ezek.) the true reading is like places…, so LXX., Vulg. The prophet gives Tyre a personality; when buried under the sea she goes down into the abode of the dead, and possibly he regards the "places desolate of old" as also gone down and gathered in the underworld. For "that go down," that are gone down.

and I shall set glory Such an antithesis is entirely unnatural; something further must be said of Tyre in continuation of "thou shalt not be inhabited." Either: nor set(thy) glory, (reading 2 fem., with final yotiose), a phrase, however, nowhere else occurring; or else the reading presumably before LXX. must be accepted: nor arise (stand forth) in the land of the living (tithyççebi).