Tyre’s sacrifice

Zechariah predicts that Tyre will be dispossessed and her wealth cast into the sea (v. 4), and then the city will be “consumed with fire.” The verb is the common verb for “eating,” and the picture of an “eating fire” sends the mind back to the sacrificial system, where the bread of Yahweh was consumed on the altar. Tyre’s destruction has a sacrificial character, like the destruction of the cities of Canaan in Joshua’s conquest.