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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.

3. And by great waters. He intimates that the riches of Tyre will not prevent it from being destroyed; and therefore he extols its wealth, in order that the judgment of God may be more manifest, and that all may know that it was no ordinary calamity that befel it; and the more unexpected it was, the more evidently would it appear to be the work of God.

The seed of the Nile. ¹⁰⁵¹⁰⁵ {Bogus footnote} By an elegant expression he describes the wealth of Tyre; for since the Nile supplied it with wheat and other necessaries of life, and since a great quantity of corn was brought to it out of Egypt, he says that it had fields and sowing on the course of the Nile, just as the inhabitants of Venice say that their harvest is on the sea, because they have nothing that grows at home, but all that is necessary for food is brought to them by commerce. The Prophet speaks of the inhabitants of Tyre in the same manner; for it might be thought incredible that they whom the Nile so freely and abundantly supplied should be in want of food. He shews that this will be a vain boast, because they will be in want of all things; and these things, as we have already said, are described by Isaiah, that all may more fully acknowledge the avenging hand of God.