Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 9:4

"Behold, the Lord will dispossess her, and he will smite her power in the sea; and she shall be devoured with fire." — Zechariah 9:4 (ASV)

Behold - Such were the preparations of Tyre. Over against them, as it were, the prophet sets before our eyes the counsels of God. Theodoret: “Since they had severed themselves from the providence of God, they were now to experience His power.” “The Lord will cast her out,” literally, deprive her of her possessions, give her an heir of what she had amassed, namely, the enemy; “and he will smite her power or wealth,” of which Ezekiel says, “With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: by the greediness of thy wisdom and by thy traffic thou hast increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches” (Ezekiel 28:4–5). All in which she relied, and so too the stronghold itself, God would smite in the sea.

The sea was her confidence and boast. She said, “I am a God; I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas” (Ezekiel 28:2).

The scene of her pride was to be that of her overthrow; the waves, which surrounded her, would bury her ruins and wash over her site. Even in the sea the hand of God would find her, and smite her in it, and into it, and so that she would abide in it. “They mocked at the king, as though he thought to prevail against Neptune (the sea).” “You despise this land-army, through confidence in the place, because you dwell on an island,” was the message of Alexander, “but soon will I show you that you dwell on a continent.”

Every device had been put in force in its defense. The versatility by which the inhabitants of an island, some two and a half miles in circumference, held at bay the conqueror of the battle of Issus with unlimited resources, “engineers from Cyprus and all Phoenicia,” and “a fleet of 180 ships from Cyprus,” attests the wisdom in which, the prophet says, she would trust. She had already a profusion of catapults and other machines useful in a siege, and easily prepared many others by the makers of war-engines and all sorts of craftsmen whom she had; and these invented new engines of all sorts, so that the whole circuit of the city was filled with engines.

Divers who would loosen the mole, grappling hooks and nets to entangle near-assailants, melted metal or heated sand to penetrate between the joints of their armor, bags of seaweed to deaden the blows of the battering machines, a fireship navigated so as to destroy the works of the enemy while its sailors escaped, fiery arrows, and wheels set in continual motion to turn aside the missiles against them—all these bore witness to an unwearied inventiveness of defense.

The temporary failures might have shaken any mind but Alexander’s (who is even said to have hesitated, but he dared not abandon the enterprise, lest he lose the prestige of victory). Yet all ended in the massacre of 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000 of her men, the crucifixion of 2,000, and the sale of the rest—whether 13,000 or 30,000—into slavery. None escaped except those whom the Sidonians secreted in the vessels with which they had been compelled to serve against her.

And she herself - When her strength is overthrown, “shall be devoured with fire.”: “Alexander, having slain all, except those who fled to the temples, ordered the houses to be set on fire.”