Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 23

The burden of Tyre ... —The chapter calls us to inquire into the political relations of Tyre at the time of Isaiah. These we learn partly from Scripture itself and partly from Assyrian inscriptions. In the days of David and Solomon, there had been an intimate alliance between Israel and Hiram, King of Tyre. Psalms 45:12 indicates at least the interchange of kingly gifts, if not the acknowledgment of sovereignty by payment of tribute. Psalms 83:7, which we have some reason to connect with the reign of Uzziah, shows that this alliance had passed into hostility.

The position of Tyre naturally threw it into more intimate relations with the northern kingdom; its country was nourished by the king’s country then, as in the days of Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:20). There seems reason to believe that the son of Tabeal, whom Pekah and Rezin intended to place upon the throne of Judah, was the son of a Tyrian ruler (see Note on Isaiah 7:6). At this time, it was the most flourishing of the Phoenician cities and had succeeded to the older fame of Sidon. The action of Ahaz in inviting the help of Tiglath-pileser against Israel and the Syrians had tended to make Tyre also an object of attack by the Assyrian armies. The prophecy now before us would seem to have been connected with that attack and foretells the issue of the conflict on which Tyre had rashly entered.

Upon that issue light is thrown by the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings. Sargon records that he “plundered the district of Samaria and the whole house of Omri,” and “reigned from Yatnan (Cyprus), which is in the midst of the sea of the setting sun ... from the great Phoenicia and Syria ... . to all the cities of remote Media” (Records of the Past, vii. 27). Sennacherib boasts of a victory over the land of the Hatti (i.e., Hittites); “fear overwhelmed Luti, the king of Sidon,” and “he fled to Yatnan, which is in the midst of the sea,” and the Assyrian “placed Tubalu” (the Tabeal of Isaiah) on the throne of the kingdom (Records of the Past, vii. 61).

In anticipation of these events, the prophet utters his note of warning to the great merchant city. It seems more natural to connect it with those events, which came within the horizon of his vision, than to refer it, as some interpreters have done, to the later siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. The mention of the Chaldeans as having been subdued by the Assyrians—which fits in with Sargon’s and Sennacherib’s victories over Merôdach-baladan (Records of the Past, vii. 45, 59), who endeavored to establish an independent kingdom in Babylon (see Note on Isaiah 39:1), and is, of course, entirely inapplicable to the time of Nebuchadnezzar—seems, indeed, to be decisive on this question.

Howl, ye ships of Tarshish ... —See Note on Isaiah 2:16. The prophet sees, as in vision, the argosies of Tyre speeding on their way homeward across the Mediterranean from Tarshish (Spain) and bids them raise their lamentation over the coming fate of their city. They will hear that their city has been taken, that there is no access to its harbors. At Chittim (Cyprus, or, probably, Citium, the chief Phoenician colony of the island), the news which burst upon them was like a revelation, confirming the vague rumors they had heard before.

Inhabitants of the isle ... —Better, coast. The word was especially appropriate to the narrow seaboard strip of land occupied by the Phoenicians—Sidon, the older city, the great Zidon of Joshua 11:8; Joshua 19:28, appearing as the representative of Phoenicia generally. It was her commerce that had filled Tyre and the other daughter cities. The “dumbness” to which the prophet calls the people is that of stupefied terror.

By great waters the seed of Sihor ... — Sihor (“the dark river”) is, as in Jeremiah 2:18, a Hebrew name for the Nile.

The grain trade with Egypt (Ezekiel 27:7, which adds the linen trade) was naturally a chief branch of Tyrian commerce. In practice, since the Egyptians had no timber to build ships and, for the most part, hated the sea, their navy consisted of Phoenicians. Tyre effectively reaped the harvest that sprang from the Nile’s inundation.

For “mart,” read gain. The “great waters” are those of the great sea, that is, of the Mediterranean.

Be thou ashamed, O Zidon ... —Zidon is addressed as the mother-city of Tyre. The “strength” (or fortress) of the sea is the rock-island on which the new Tyre was built. She sits as a widow bereaved of her children, with no power to renew the population which once crowded her streets .

As at the report concerning Egypt ... —Better, When the report comes to Egypt ... The news of the capture of Tyre would cause dismay in Egypt, partly because the export trade of their corn depended upon it, partly because it had served as a kind of outpost against the Assyrians, who, under Sargon (Records of the Past, vii. 34) and Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:21; 2 Kings 19:8), were pressing on against the Ethiopian dynasty then dominant in Egypt.