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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.

7. Is this your exulting city? The Prophet mocks at Tyre, and ridicules her pride, because she boasted of the antiquity of her name. He likewise confirms what all would suppose to be incredible; for this prediction was undoubtedly laughed at, seeing that the power of Tyre was unshaken, and her wealth was like a wall of brass. So much the more confidently does Isaiah speak, and threaten that her ruin is certain, and that, though she be more ancient than other cities, and though she be universally applauded on that ground, still this will not prevent her from being destroyed. The origin of Tyre is traced in profane history from time almost out of mind, and is so obscure and intricate, that hardly anything can be ascertained; though they allege that it was founded by the Phenicians, as those who boast of the fame of antiquity call themselves natives of the soil. With this antiquity the Prophet contrasts banishment, intimating that, when God had determined to inflict punishment on that nation, her stability would be at an end.

Her feet shall carry her, to travel into a distant country. To follow wherever “the feet carry,” is nothing else than to have long wanderings. Yet he also means that they will be deprived of their wealth, and will be in want of all things during their banishment, so that they will not have a conveyance of any kind, or a beast to carry them. Banishment is a very hard condition, when poverty is added to it; for it may be more easily endured where there are the means of supporting life; but when men must dwell in unknown countries in the deepest poverty, the misery is extreme. He adds the finishing stroke to their miseries by saying, that they must “travel into a distant country;” for the greater the distance, the harder is the banishment.