Isaiah 23 - Introduction

An Oracle on Tyre

The unique position occupied by Tyre in the ancient world engaged the attention of more than one Hebrew prophet. Ezekiel, in one of the most original and elaborate of his foreign prophecies (ch. 26 28), where he announces her impending overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar, shews the liveliest appreciation of the genius of that great commercial city, her unbounded enterprise, her devotion to material interests, and her self-deifying pride. Very similar in spirit is the simpler and shorter passage now before us, which, however, is not directed exclusively against Tyre, but embraces the older though less famous Zidon, and the whole Phœnician sea-board.

The chapter is clearly divided into two sections:

2 Samuel 23:1; 2 Samuel 23:1. A poem in three strophes on the destruction of the Phœnician cities and harbours, which is conceived as having already taken place.

(1) Isaiah 23:1. Ships of Tarshish, homeward bound, are dismayed on their arrival at Cyprus by the intelligence that the harbours of Phœnicia are closed to them (1); the once populous and thriving coastland lies desolate (2, 3); the sea is now a childless mother and forgets that she ever had offspring (4); Egypt is stricken with terror at the report of the fall of Tyre (5).

(2) Isaiah 23:6. The inhabitants of Phœnicia are ironically urged to leave the joyous cities which had been theirs from time immemorial, and seek refuge in their colonies beyond the sea (6, 7). For this is the purpose of Jehovah, to make an end of the regal power of Tyre, and cast contempt on all earthly greatness (8, 9).

(3) Isaiah 23:10. But Jehovah's power reaches over the sea, and not even in their own colonies can the exiled Phœnicians find rest for the sole of their foot. The distant Tarshish disowns their authority, the nearer Cyprus is also, for an unexplained reason, untenable. At the obscure Isaiah 23:13 we lose the thread of the writer's thought, but in Isaiah 23:14 the poem ends as it had begun with an apostrophe to the ships of Tarshish, whose haven is demolished.

ii. Isa 23:15-18form an appendix written in a prose style (with the exception of the "harlot's song," a snatch of popular poetry, in Isaiah 23:16). It announces the restoration of Tyre after the lapse of seventy years, but a restoration under entirely changed conditions, in which the gains of Tyre shall be consecrated to Jehovah and the use of His people.

There appear to be no valid reasons for refusing to ascribe the authorship of Isaiah 23:1 to Isaiah. The only serious difficulty is caused by the reference to "the land of the Chaldæans" in Isaiah 23:13; but there the text is in all probability corrupt (see the notes). There are two occasions in the time of Isaiah to which the prophecy has been referred. The earlier is the campaign of Shalmaneser IV. (727 722) against Phœnicia, described at length in a fragment of Menander of Ephesus (Josephus, Ant.ix. 14, 2). Shalmaneser is said to have blockaded the insular part of Tyre for five years; but as his entire reign was only about five years, it is probable that the siege (like that of Samaria) was finished by Sargon. That the city was captured is nowhere stated, and the reticence of Sargon rather suggests that the siege issued in a capitulation. Phœnicia was again ravaged by Sennacherib in the expedition of 701, just before the invasion of Philistia and Judah, when the king of Zidon actually fled to Cyprus. Tyre is not mentioned in the Assyrian record of this campaign. Either of these invasions would furnish an adequate occasion for Isaiah's prophecy, though the second is perhaps less probable than the first. It may at least be said that the lyrical character of the passage is more intelligible when the prophet was a disinterested spectator of events in Phœnicia, than under the strain of excitement with which he faced the crisis of 701. It is true that Tyre did not then suffer the complete overthrow which is here contemplated; but it was nevertheless the first time that her existence had been seriously threatened, and the absence of a literal fulfilment affords no presumption against the genuineness of a prophecy.

The appendix (Isaiah 23:15) has been thought to bear the stamp of a later origin. The seventy years" duration of the humiliation of Tyre may be based on Jeremiah's (Isaiah 25:11 f.) determination of the period of Chaldæan supremacy, and the use to which the riches of Tyre are to be put (Isaiah 23:18) is perhaps suggested by such late prophecies as Isaiah 45:14; Isaiah 60:11; Isaiah 61:6. The case, therefore, appears to be closely parallel to that of the oracle on Egypt in ch. 19. In both we have a prophecy which is presumably Isaianic, followed by a supplement which there is reason to regard as post-exilic.