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23. Prophecy About Tyre

¹ A prophecy against Tyre:

   Wail, you ships of Tarshish!
   For Tyre is destroyed
   and left without house or harbor.
From the land of Cyprus
   word has come to them.

    ² Be silent, you people of the island
   and you merchants of Sidon,
   whom the seafarers have enriched.
³ On the great waters
   came the grain of the Shihor;
the harvest of the Nile Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls Sidon, / who cross over the sea; / your envoys are on the great waters. / The grain of the Shihor, / the harvest of the Nile, was the revenue of Tyre,
   and she became the marketplace of the nations.

    ⁴ Be ashamed, Sidon, and you fortress of the sea,
   for the sea has spoken:
“I have neither been in labor nor given birth;
   I have neither reared sons nor brought up daughters.”
⁵ When word comes to Egypt,
   they will be in anguish at the report from Tyre.

    ⁶ Cross over to Tarshish;
   wail, you people of the island.
⁷ Is this your city of revelry,
   the old, old city,
whose feet have taken her
   to settle in far-off lands?
⁸ Who planned this against Tyre,
   the bestower of crowns,
whose merchants are princes,
   whose traders are renowned in the earth?
⁹ The LORD Almighty planned it,
   to bring down her pride in all her splendor
   and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.

    ¹⁰ Till Dead Sea Scrolls and some Septuagint manuscripts; Masoretic Text Go through your land as they do along the Nile,
   Daughter Tarshish,
   for you no longer have a harbor.
¹¹ The LORD has stretched out his hand over the sea
   and made its kingdoms tremble.
He has given an order concerning Phoenicia
   that her fortresses be destroyed.
¹² He said, “No more of your reveling,
   Virgin Daughter Sidon, now crushed!

   “Up, cross over to Cyprus;
   even there you will find no rest.”
¹³ Look at the land of the Babylonians, Or Chaldeans
   this people that is now of no account!
The Assyrians have made it
   a place for desert creatures;
they raised up their siege towers,
   they stripped its fortresses bare
   and turned it into a ruin.

¹⁴ Wail, you ships of Tarshish;
your fortress is destroyed!

¹⁵ At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the span of a king’s life. But at the end of these seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute:

    ¹⁶ “Take up a harp, walk through the city,
   you forgotten prostitute;
play the harp well, sing many a song,
   so that you will be remembered.”

¹⁷ At the end of seventy years, the LORD will deal with Tyre. She will return to her lucrative prostitution and will ply her trade with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. ¹⁸ Yet her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the LORD; they will not be stored up or hoarded. Her profits will go to those who live before the LORD, for abundant food and fine clothes.

4. Be thou ashamed, O Sidon; for the sea hath spoken. This verse is added for the purpose of heightening the picture. We have explained the reason why he speaks particularly of Sidon. He calls Tyre, by way of eminence, (κατ ᾿ ἐξοχὴν,) the sea, as if she reigned alone in the midst of the sea.

I have not travailed. These words are immediately added, and belong (μιμητικῶς) to a fictitious address put into the mouth of Tyre, in which the Prophet wittily taunts the inhabitants of Tyre, who boasted of her colonies; for she “brought forth” other illustrious cities. “In ancient times,” says Pliny, “she was famous for the cities which she built, Leptis, Utica, and that rival of the Roman empire, Carthage, which aspired to govern the whole world, besides Cadiz, which was built beyond the limits of the world. Her whole superiority now consists of scarlet and purple.” (Plin. Hist. Nat., lib. v. c. 19.) Thus, Isaiah represents Tyre as bewailing her ancient glory, because she has ceased to be a mother, and because it is of no avail to her that she has brought forth so many children, and founded so many cities; for at an early period Carthage sent regularly every year a present to Tyre, for the purpose of doing homage to her as the mother. In this manner Tyre appeared to hold a higher rank than all other cities, since even Carthage, though a rival of the Roman empire, was in some respect subject to Tyre: but the Lord stripped her of all her ornaments in a moment, so that she bewailed her bereavement, as if she had never brought up any children.