Tyre, off to the northwest of Israel, in Lebanon, has its own prophecy. This is the fifth of five prophecies in chapters 21 to 23. The others are about Babylon, Edom, Arabia and Jerusalem.
Isaiah 23:1-3, Merchants wail
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.
Be silent, you people of the island
and you merchants of Sidon,
whom the seafarers have enriched.
On the great waters
came the grain of the Shihor;
the harvest of the Nile was the revenue of Tyre,
and she became the marketplace of the nations.
In that day, Tyre was a Phoenician port on the Mediterranean coast. Part of it consisted of a mainland harbor; the other part an island 500 yards or so offshore. Alexander the Great conquered Tyre in 332 BC by constructing a causeway from the mainland.
As Motyer points out, from the first mentions of Tyre in the Old Testament (see 2 Samuel 5:11-12, 1 Kings 5:1-12), the coastal port in Phoenicia represented commerce. Tyre and Sidon were linked; both were ports on the Mediterranean (Sidon is about 23 miles north of Tyre.) The ships of Tarshish represented the merchant ships of the Mediterranean. They were an important source of trade and wealth to a land like Israel that often had little access to the sea and so Tyre here represents commerce and material wealth.
Isaiah 23:5, The Sea speaks
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.”
The Mediterranean Sea, the source of the wealth of Tyre, speaks out against her.
Isaiah 23:5-7, Egypt will cry out
When word comes to Egypt,
they will be in anguish at the report from Tyre.
Cross over to Tarshish;
wail, you people of the island.
Is this your city of revelry,
the old, old city,
whose feet have taken her
to settle in far-off lands?
The Sea continues to speak. When Tyre and Sidon are destroyed, the merchants of Egypt, like the merchants of Cyprus, will be in anguish at their loss of wealth and trade.
Isaiah 23:8-9, Who did this?
Who planned this against Tyre,
the bestower of crowns,
whose merchants are princes,
whose traders are renowned in the earth?
The LORD Almighty planned it,
to bring down her pride in all her splendor
and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.
Who brought down Tyre? YHWH, the LORD Almighty.
Isaiah 23:10-12, Forced to till the land
Till your land as they do along the Nile,
Daughter Tarshish,
for you no longer have a harbor.
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.
He said, “No more of your reveling,
Virgin Daughter Sidon, now crushed!
“Up, cross over to Cyprus;
even there you will find no rest.”
Instead of sailing to Tyre to trade their goods, the merchants of Tarshish are to give up the sea! Their trading partner's devastation might mean the end of prosperous sailing.
Isaiah 23:13-14, Babylon too
Look at the land of the Babylonians,
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.
Wail, you ships of Tarshish;
your fortress is destroyed!
Babylon also is destroyed. The ships of Tarshish cannot sail there either!
Isaiah 23:15-16, A lament for Tyre
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:
“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.”
Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years (the length of a king's life) but then they are to walk through the city singing a song, like that of a forgotten prostitute (!), trying to be remembered.
Both Motyer and Grogan mark these years from the invasion of Phoenicia by Sennacherib in 701 BC (at the same time that he threatened Hezekiah in Jerusalam) to the eventual rebirth of Tyre around 630 BC.
Isaiah 23:17-18, Seventy years
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.
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.
At the end of the prophecied seventy years Tyre will return to her lucrative sea trade, which are likened to the earnings of a prostitute returning to her profession. But eventually the profits of Tyre will go, says Isaiah, to the temple and worship of YHWH. (In Ezra 3:7, the returning exiles, eager to rebuild the temple, renew trade with Tyre,)
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