Isaiah 23

CHAPTER 23

A Prophecy About Tyre (23:1–18)

1–3 Tyre was a port city of Phoenicia (presentday Lebanon) built partly on an island just off the Mediterranean coast.¹⁰⁷ Sidon was a second port city forty kilometers north of Tyre. Isaiah’s prophecy concerns both cities, along with the trading empire they had established throughout the Mediterranean world.

Isaiah, looking into the future, calls upon the ships of Tarshish¹⁰⁸ to “wail” (verse 1). He also tells the people of Tyre and Sidon to be silent, as they face God’s impending judgment.

4–5 Isaiah calls on Sidon and the fortress of the sea (Tyre) to be ashamed (verse 4). They will lose their sons and daughters in the coming judgment; the sea, personified as the “mother” of the Phoenicians, says it will be as if she never had any children! That would surely be reason for shame in the ancient world.¹⁰⁹

6–9 Isaiah urges the people of the island (Tyre) to leave and go to Tarshish (verse 6). He calls Tyre a bestower of crowns (verse 8), because of the kings it had crowned in its many colonies. Then Isaiah reminds the people of Tyre (and Sidon) that it was the Lord who planned this judgment against them because of their great pride. The Lord’s opposition to the proud is a repeated theme throughout the book of Isaiah (see Isaiah 2:10–18).

10–14 With Tyre and Sidon destroyed, their colonies would become agricultural communities (verse 10). Even in Cyprus, which relied on merchant shipping, there would be no rest, no prosperity (verse 12). Phoenicia itself would look like the land of the Babylonians, which soon was to be destroyed by Assyria¹¹⁰ (verse 13).

15–18 In these final verses, Isaiah predicts that after God’s initial judgment, which will last seventy years, Tyre will experience a temporary period of prosperity. But the profits of that prosperity will not be used to enrich Tyre but rather will be set apart for the LORD and for His people in Judah¹¹¹ (verse 18).