by your great wisdom in your trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth—
The prince's sin is plain: he has said aloud, 'I am a god,' and sits in the seat of God as though he were independent and unaccountable as the Lord alone is. God resists the proud, and such blasphemy will not stand. He mistakes the dependence his city has on him for his own dependence on no one at all.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 28:1-10
By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic,.... Or, "by thy great wisdom in thy traffic" (i); through great skill in trade and commerce: hast thou increased thy riches; to a very great degree, a prodigious bulk; so antichrist has done, especially through trafficking with the souls of men, which is one part of his merchandise, as it was of Tyre, Rev 18:13, and thine...
By thy great wisdom - He attributed every thing to himself; he did not acknowledge a Divine providence. As he got all by himself, so he believed he could keep all by himself, and had no need of any foreign help.