The Merchants of Tyre Stripped of Their Glory

Isaiah 23

Who planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns, whose traders are princes, whose merchants are the honored ones of the earth? The Lord of Armies planned it, to desecrate all its glorious beauty, to disgrace all the honored ones of the earth. (Isa 23:8-9)

Main Idea: Isaiah speaks an oracle against the wealthy, powerful trading city of Tyre, a symbol for the worldly lust for materials that still dominates our world.

1. Tyre Described: A Wealthy Merchant City
   1. Two patterns of world dominance: military and economic
   2. Tyre described: a wealthy merchant city
   3. A heavily protected fortress
2. Tyre Exposed: A Satanic Stronghold
   1. Ezekiel 28: the “king of Tyre” condemned
   2. Like Isaiah 14: Satan the puppet master over economic dominators
3. Tyre Destroyed: A Divine Punishment
   1. The punishment declared by Isaiah the prophet
   2. The punishment described in greater detail in Ezekiel 26
   3. The punishment decreed by almighty God
   4. The reason for the decree: the humbling of all human pride
   5. Tyre to be rebuilt only to fall again and again
   6. The final fall of Tyre: Revelation 18
4. Tyre Evangelized: A Triumph for Christ
   1. Tyre more bearable on the day of judgment than Capernaum
   2. Tyre visited by Christ; an early Gentile trophy won (Mark 7:24-30)
   3. A growing church in Tyre: Acts 21

Tyre Described: A Wealthy Merchant City

Every year, various large ports vie for the honor of being called the “busiest port in the world.” Since 2005, Shanghai, China, has claimed the title based on cargo tonnage: over 500,000 tons of cargo flow by sea through Shanghai every year (AAPA, Port Rankings). The flow of materials through such massive and frantically busy ports like Shanghai and Singapore, Hong Kong and Rotterdam is essential to our international economy; the sea has always been the easiest and most inexpensive way to transport goods. For this reason, large cities have almost always grown by large bodies of water or large rivers. Tyre’s dependence on the sea is the focus of this prophecy.

Tyre represents human striving after wealth, the material possessions that will make its people comfortable and happy, prosperous and satisfied. Though each of these possessions is a good gift from God, like any created thing, each can become an idol, the center of human existence. Thus Tyre represents idolatry. It also represents human pride, the great enemy of God.

In Isaiah 23 God speaks through his prophet Isaiah a word of destruction against the busiest seaport of Isaiah’s time—the city of Tyre.

Two great patterns of dominance are in world history: military and economic. The “four beasts” of Daniel 7 represent militarily dominant, world-crushing empires. These world conquerors build up their military strength and skill; they stockpile weapons and train vast armies, all to satisfy the lust for conquest that flames the heart of their ambitious king. When the time is right, they sweep over their borders and invade the peaceful dwelling places of their neighbors and plunder them (Ezek 38:11-12). Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome all represent this kind of dominance.

Tyre, on the other hand, represents the other kind of dominance: economic. This is a worldwide empire of trade. It is built not by terror and death but by smooth talk and a warm handshake. The Tyrian traders were experts at setting up trade relations with all the regions around the Mediterranean Sea. They gained the confidence of the rulers and forged trade alliances with the merchants in some nation, and soon the ships of Tyre had yet another trading partner by which to become even wealthier. Little by little, they became the hub of all commerce on the Mediterranean, and by their widespread trade they became fabulously rich.

So what was Tyre? Tyre was a port city on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in modern-day Lebanon. It was established approximately twenty-eight centuries before the birth of Christ by the sea-faring Phoenicians. Originally, it consisted of two distinct urban centers—one on the mainland and one on a pair of rocky islands just off the coast, like Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay. King Hiram of Tyre had connected these two islands by means of an embankment and had also brought drinking water to the island port city. The island port city had two harbors, one on the north side and the other on the south; the northern harbor was acclaimed to be one of the best harbors in the eastern Mediterranean. It was from this base that the ships of Tyre (and her neighboring sister city, Sidon) began sailing out into the waters of the Mediterranean to seek trading partners, and they found them. Ezekiel 27:3-25 lists the trading partners of Tyre in detail, likening Tyre itself to a trading vessel made of materials from all over that part of the world. A quick survey of that chapter shows how extensive were the trade routes of the Tyrian ships.

With such a stunning flow of cargo and wealth through Tyre, it seemed best to the kings of Tyre to make the city a powerful fortress, to protect its vastly alluring wealth. In many places in Scripture, Tyre is called a “fortress,” quite difficult to capture, even to attack. In fact, the island city’s walls went right down to the sea! How do you attack a seafaring nation whose walls prevent any access whatsoever and that can be constantly resupplied by sea? If you try to besiege them, they can get food and water and military supplies by sea at night; if all you have is a land-based army, you have no chance of destroying the island fortress.

Historically, Tyre had a good relationship with Israel. King Hiram of Tyre provided materials for David to build his palace (2 Sam 5:11) as well as vital materials and craftsmen to King Solomon to build the temple of the Lord (1 Kgs 5:1). The latter verse even speaks of the great love that Hiram had for David. But as time went on, Tyre eventually showed itself to be an enemy of God’s people. In Ezekiel 26:2-3 God says he is against Tyre because they had delighted in the ruin of Jerusalem. So God said he would bring many nations against Tyre as a judgment. This is exactly what Isaiah 23 had foretold!

Tyre Exposed: A Satanic Stronghold

In order to get a fuller picture of Tyre, however, we must look behind the externals to the true power behind Tyre. As we saw in the commentary on Isaiah 14, two prophecies in the Old Testament concern the fall of Satan: Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Amazingly, both of them are, on the surface, oracles of judgment against human kings: the king of Babylon (Isa 14) and the king of Tyre (Ezek 28). But, as we made clear in Isaiah 14, these powerful men are merely puppets, dancing on the strings held by the puppet master, Satan. Satan is called the “god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4), the most powerful ruler on earth. He boasted to Jesus that all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor had been given to him, and that he could give them to anyone he wanted to (Luke 4:5-6). Yet, he remains hidden, invisible, the “ruler of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). So, if the two great patterns of world domination are military and economic, it seems reasonable that the true “king of Babylon” and “king of Tyre” is Satan and that the human kings are merely puppets. How wise for God to speak the words of judgment to the tricky, invisible puppet master through his puppets. They will share the same fate, both languishing in the lake of fire (Rev 20:10).

In Ezekiel 28 the oracle speaks words that soar beyond the ordinary level of speech addressing a human king. The “king of Tyre” was “in Eden, the garden of God” and was “the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (vv. 12-13). This “king of Tyre” was “anointed guardian cherub” on the holy mountain of God, but when his heart became proud because of his beauty, God cast him down to the earth (v. 17). There, the wicked “king of Tyre” corrupted himself by his widespread trade.

Thus do the puppet master and the human puppet come together. Satan moves the economic levers, motivating human rulers with the lust of the eyes and yearning for power and glory. They become like him in pride and soaring ambition; and, like him, they come under eternal judgment from God Almighty. In our age the economic megapowers exert in some ways even more influence on the hearts and lives of human beings than do the military. Whether the commodity is oil, wheat, steel, textiles, medicines, high-tech electronics devices, or even money itself, the CEOs, executive boards, and multinational conglomerates shape life on this planet. They set prices and quotas, stimulate covetous desires for individuals and economic vitality for nations, and in some cases decide who lives or dies, and even more powerfully, what they live or die for! Satan is the hidden power behind these thrones, whether they even know he exists or not. Scripture alone exposes Tyre for what it really is: a satanic deception in direct conflict with the holy God.

Tyre Destroyed: A Divine Punishment

The judgment from God is plainly described in this chapter. Isaiah the prophet declares it in verses 1-6, powerfully depicting it as news that reaches Tyrian trader vessels that are nearing their home port from distant Tarshish (possibly in Spain) with yet another rich cargo. The message comes from Cyprus that Tyre has been demolished; her beautiful harbor is gone. So also Sidon has been demolished in the same onslaught. Everything is leveled. The news spreads throughout the Mediterranean Sea’s network of trading partners: news reaches Egypt, and the farmers of the Nile will no longer have a market for their grain (vv. 3,5). The destruction of Tyre is even more clearly described in Ezekiel 26:3-14: Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, will destroy the mainland city of Tyre (v. 8); he will make it a bare rock, flat on top (v. 4); fishermen will spread nets over the site (v. 5); the debris will be thrown into the water (v. 12); ultimately, Tyre will never be rebuilt (v. 14).

Isaiah makes it clear that this devastation is no accident of fate or of the ebbs and flows of human history; no, it is a direct judgment from a holy God. Isaiah 23:8-9 states it openly:

Who planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns, whose traders are princes, whose merchants are the honored ones of the earth? The Lord of Armies planned it, to desecrate all its glorious beauty, to disgrace all the honored ones of the earth.

So also verse 11 says that God stretched out his hand over the sea and made its kingdoms tremble. From these verses it is also plain why God did it: to humble all human pride, to lay low all human glory. Tyre’s soaring ambition, like that of the king of Babylon, was a direct challenge and affront to God; so also the merchandise of the nations was an idolatrous system that supplanted God in the hearts of consumers. So God planned a judgment against Tyre to humble human glory.

God planned it, decreed it, and then brought it to pass. Babylon that was itself humbled at one time by Assyria (v. 13) would be God’s initial instrument for attacking Tyre. In verses 15-17 it is revealed that Tyre will be humbled, stripped, and laid bare for seventy years. But then she would be rebuilt and again take up her trade with the nations. This would begin the cycle of Tyre’s destruction that would continue for many centuries. Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians did drive his army in a hard campaign against Tyre (Ezek 29:18-20) but would have little to show for it. The majority of Tyre’s wealth slipped away by ships to distant ports, and the land-based army of the Babylonians won the city but lost their plunder. An aspect of the prophecy against Tyre was thus yet to be fulfilled: destroyed completely, never again to be rebuilt. Three centuries later Alexander the Great came along the coastline, determined to take everything from Tyre. With brilliance and persistence, by recruiting a navy and by scraping the land-based city down to bare rock (as Ezek 26:4,14 predicted) and using the rubble to build a causeway from the mainland, Alexander was able to take the city and all its rich plunder. Alexander then razed the city, and it has never been rebuilt to this day.

But ultimately, according to Isaiah 23:18, the wealth of Tyre will go to the godly. The meek will inherit the earth, and the sons and daughters of Abraham will be heirs of the world (Matt 5:5; Rom 4:13). The final fall of “Tyre” (the spiritual heir of the literal city) will be included in the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18, when the same scenes that are depicted in Isaiah 23 are reenacted: traders and mariners stand afar off and mourn and lament her destruction because her markets are closed and no one will buy their goods anymore (Rev 18:11-13), and sea captains and sailors will see the smoke of her destruction and lament that the time of making wealth through her trade will be over (vv. 17-19). Then will the spirit of Tyre, the marketplace of the nations, be crushed forever.

Tyre Evangelized: A Triumph for Christ

Yet, in the grace and mercy of God, some of the people of Tyre were chosen for salvation, and they will celebrate God’s glory and inherit the wealth of the earth through faith in Christ. Several vignettes from the New Testament give us a sense of this sovereign mercy. In Luke 6:17-20 Jesus Christ preached and healed a great number of people from all over Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Then Jesus actually went up to that region and ministered in the vicinity of Tyre (Matt 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30). A Syro-Phoenician woman from Tyre came to him and pleaded with him to heal her demon-possessed daughter, and he did, a foretaste of the greater grace that would come later. By the time of the book of Acts there was a church at Tyre that met with Paul and sent him on in his work (Acts 21:3-6). How sweet is the grace of God to move through the wreckage of Tyre’s lust and greed and create some true gems—people who will spend eternity praising God for grace in Christ.

Applications

Christ alone has the power to rescue us from idolatry, from the greed that comes out of the commerce of the nations. The spirit of Tyre is still alive today. You can see it as you sit by the bay in Shanghai and watch all the cargo ships steam out to the ports of the world. You can see it as you walk down the aisles at Walmart or Best Buy. Jesus said, “Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). It is for us as Christians to live boldly free from materialism in this present evil age; to be generous with our money, storing up treasure in heaven; to be suspicious of our flesh’s desire for the next new electronic device. It is for us to see Satan’s hidden presence behind the economic ebbs and flows of human history and to understand that God will judge it finally in the end (Rev 18). It is for us to heed the warnings against worldliness in James 4:4 and 1 John 2:15-17, and to use the things of this world while not being addicted to them (1 Cor 7:29-31). As we consider the issue of worldwide evangelism, we should realize that the consumerism and false joy of the materialistic West has preceded us on the mission field. Coca-Cola is more widespread than the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will have to battle the lie of materialism everywhere we go, even in the poorest nations. Isaiah 23 is a prime place to start, pointing to God’s judgments on Tyre as proof of his hatred of worldliness.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Why do you think God is so zealous to destroy Tyre and its busy trade and teeming markets? How does Tyre represent idolatry and human pride?
2. What does this chapter teach you about human nature, human desires, human pleasures, and human pride?
3. What does this chapter teach you about God—his power, plans, and purposes?
4. How does Ezekiel 28 expose the true “king of Tyre” in the same way that Isaiah 14 exposes the true “king of Babylon”?
5. How does Satan manipulate the world economy to suit his wicked purposes? What are Satan’s purposes for the markets of the world?
6. How is God’s plan for Tyre unfolded in world history? If God intended to destroy Tyre so that it would never be rebuilt, why did it take centuries to accomplish it?
7. What connection do you see between Tyre and Babylon in Revelation 18? What verbal similarities do you see between Isaiah 23 and Revelation 18?
8. How is this chapter a general warning to Christians against the consumerism that dominates our lifestyles?
9. How do we as Christians combat the “spirit of Tyre” (worldliness, lust for possessions) that we see in our hearts and lives?
10. How does this issue affect missions and the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth?