Isaiah 23:1-18

The burden of Tyre

The prophecy against Tyre: lessons

The Tarshish of this chapter is Spain.

Chittim is the island of Cyprus. The word “merchant” is the same word that is rendered in other places “Canaanite.” The Canaanites were the most energetically commercial men of their time. To be a merchant was to be a Canaanite; to be a Canaanite was to be a merchant, substantially.

I. The world must come, however slowly, to recognise the fact that RULERS THEMSELVES ARE RULED; that the Lord reigneth. There can only be one Supreme. What a glorious dawn is that which will shine above the eastern hills when the world begins to feel that it is reigned over, governed, guided in all its march of progress. The world grows warmer under that recognition. At first the recognition is terrible enough, but it becomes more and more beneficent as things shape themselves.

II. The world must come to recognise the fact that EVEN EMPIRES ARE DEPENDENT UPON CHARACTER FOR THEIR EXISTENCE. For Tyre we may substitute London, Paris, New York, or the countries which they indicate. It is only the letter of this chapter which is ancient; the principle is energetic evermore. (J. Parker, D. D.)

The prophet’s attitude towards cities and states

When the Spirit of God is in a man he cares for no city, how great soever it may be, though he himself may not have whereon to lay his head. There is, however, a spirit in him which makes him greater than all the capitals of the world were they added to one another and constituted into one great avenue of capitals, each house in all the vista crowned or starred with a sceptre thrust from every window. The Galilean fishermen cared nothing for the pomp of Jerusalem; old prophets with ragged mantles on their stooping shoulders hurled Divinest judgment against proud kings. (J. Parker, D. D.)

The Church’s love of worldly patronage

The Church has lost this prophetic inspiration, and now she bows down to worldly greatness and tells with delight that a chariot and pair has driven up to her front door. To what cent of indignity has she sunk, even in her very speech! She is now an influential Church, a respectable Church, an intelligent Church, a Church possessed of exceptional advantages, and most careful about her reputation! So the world pays its copper tribute, and says to the Church, Behave yourself! let us do what we like, and you sing your hymns and go up to heaven like any other vapour. Where are the men who can do without food, clothing, shelter? Where are the men who would spurn any offer of patronage?--sons of thunder, sons of judgment; men who never sit down to eat, but snatch their apple as they hasten along the road that they may keep their next appointment to thunder judgment upon unrighteousness, and break in pieces with an iron rod the vessel of impurity. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Tyre

Tyre’s celebrity dates first from the time of David. In the Assyrian era, however, Tyre had already attained to a kind of supremacy over the rest of the Phoenician cities. It lay on the coast, rather more than twenty miles from Sidon; but being hard pressed by enemies, it had transferred the real seat of its trade and wealth to a rocky island, three miles farther north, and only 1200 paces from the mainland. The strait that separated this insular Tyre (Τύρος) from ancient Tyre (Παλαίτυρος) was, upon the whole, shallow, and the ship channel in the neighbourhood of the island was only about eighteen feet deep, so that a siege of insular Tyre by Alexander was carried out by the erection of a mole. Luther refers the prophecy to this attack by Alexander. But earlier than this event was the struggle of Tyre with Assyria and Babylon, and first of all the question arises, Which of these two struggles has the prophecy in view? In consequence of new disclosures, for which we are indebted to Assyriology, the question has entered a new phase. Down to the present, however, it still permits of only a hypothetical and unsatisfactory solution. (F. Delitzsch.)

The Phoenicians

The Phoenicians were simply carriers and middle men. In all time there is no instance of a nation so wholly given over to buying and selling, who frequented even the battlefields of the world that they might strip the dead and purchase the captive. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)