Was Ezekiel's prophecy against Tyre fulfilled? Ezekiel 26 and 29

The passages

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.

Ezekiel 26:3-4

And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

Ezekiel 26:14

Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it.

Ezekiel 29:18

The problem

Ezekiel 26 says Nebuchadnezzar will bring horses and chariots, break down the walls and scrape the dust. Babylon besieged Tyre for about thirteen years (roughly 586–573 BC), according to Josephus quoting Menander, but the island city appears not to have been destroyed, and Tyre continued under Babylonian rule. Ezekiel himself admits in 29:18 that the siege did not pay. Alexander the Great took Tyre in 332 BC by building a causeway from the mainland, which used rubble from the old mainland city. But Tyre was rebuilt, remained important through Roman and Crusader times, and exists today.

What believers and scholars say

Multiple stages. Ezekiel 26:3 says "many nations", and the prophecy shifts between singular and plural. Defenders read it as a prophecy of successive attacks: Nebuchadnezzar began the destruction of the mainland city, and Alexander scraped its dust into the sea. This is the common apologetic reading. The scraping image does match Alexander's causeway.

The "never rebuilt" clause. Defenders hold that the ancient city of Tyre as it was then was never restored to its former glory, or that the verse refers to the mainland town. Critics note that the island city was the main one and that the verse says Tyre will be found "no more" (26:21).

Prophecy as conditional or poetic. Block and Zimmerli treat the oracles as typical prophetic judgment poetry, which uses large images and was never meant to forecast the details of future history. Ezekiel himself recorded in chapter 29 that the outcome fell short, and he gave Nebuchadnezzar Egypt as compensation.

Where this leaves it

The prophecy was at least partly fulfilled in that Tyre was attacked by Babylon and later conquered by Alexander. The strongest statements, that Tyre would never be rebuilt, did not come true in the plain sense, and the prophet himself recorded an adjustment. A reader can see a fulfilled warning, an unfulfilled one, or a poem about judgment.