World English Bible
- The burden of Tyre. Howl, you ships of Tarshish! For it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in. From the land of Kittim it is revealed to them.
- Be still, you inhabitants of the coast, you whom the merchants of Sidon that pass over the sea have replenished.
- On great waters, the seed of the Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, was her revenue. She was the market of nations.
- Be ashamed, Sidon; for the sea has spoken, the stronghold of the sea, saying, “I have not travailed, nor given birth, neither have I nourished young men, nor brought up virgins.”
- When the report comes to Egypt, they will be in anguish at the report of Tyre.
- Pass over to Tarshish! Wail, you inhabitants of the coast!
- Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days, whose feet carried her far away to travel?
- Who has planned this against Tyre, the giver of crowns, whose merchants are princes, whose traders are the honorable of the earth?
- The LORD of Armies has planned it, to stain the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.
- Pass through your land like the Nile, daughter of Tarshish. There is no restraint any more.
- He has stretched out his hand over the sea. He has shaken the kingdoms. The LORD has ordered the destruction of Canaan’s strongholds.
- He said, “You shall rejoice no more, you oppressed virgin daughter of Sidon. Arise, pass over to Kittim. Even there you will have no rest.”
- Behold, the land of the Chaldeans. This people didn’t exist. The Assyrians founded it for those who dwell in the wilderness. They set up their towers. They overthrew its palaces. They made it a ruin.
- Howl, you ships of Tarshish, for your stronghold is laid waste!
- It will come to pass in that day that Tyre will be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king. After the end of seventy years it will be to Tyre like in the song of the prostitute.
- Take a harp; go about the city, you prostitute that has been forgotten. Make sweet melody. Sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
- It will happen after the end of seventy years that the LORD will visit Tyre. She will return to her wages, and will play the prostitute with all the kingdoms of the world on the surface of the earth.
- Her merchandise and her wages will be holiness to the LORD. It will not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise will be for those who dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.
Isaiah 23
A ship hears the news before it reaches port: Tyre has fallen. There is “no house, no entering in.” The merchants have lost more than a market. They have lost the place where they expected to be welcomed home.
Tyre was a great Phoenician port. Egyptian grain passed through its hands; its ships reached Cyprus and perhaps as far as the western Mediterranean. Archaeologists have found heaps of crushed murex shells at Phoenician sites, traces of the costly purple dye that clothed the powerful. Isaiah asks us to hear the silence that follows such wealth.
Then comes one of the chapter’s strangest images. The sea speaks like a mother who has borne no children. Tyre’s ships had carried food, cloth, and treasure across the waters, yet now the sea says it has raised no one. Trade can sustain life, but it cannot give life. A city can become indispensable to the world and still discover that indispensability is no shelter.
Tyre was “the giver of crowns”; its merchants were counted as princes. But the Lord intends “to stain the pride of all glory.” At the exodus, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and a path opened for slaves (Exodus 14:21). Here the Lord stretches out his hand over the sea, and the kingdoms shake. The waters that carry the powerful remain under the command of the God who hears the powerless.
Yet judgment is not the last word. After seventy years, the Lord will “visit” Tyre. The Hebrew verb can describe an intervention of care or of reckoning. Isaiah does not make Tyre’s return to business a simple story of repentance: she returns to her old ways. Then, abruptly, her earnings become “holiness to the LORD.” They are not stored away. They provide food and lasting clothing for those who dwell before him.
That ending should unsettle us. Deuteronomy forbids bringing a prostitute’s literal wages into God’s house (Deuteronomy 23:18); Isaiah’s startling image is no permission to bless injustice with a donation. It asks a harder question: What would change if wealth ceased to be a monument to its owners and became provision for people in God’s presence? The chapter begins with a harbor no one can enter and ends with people who have enough to eat and wear. Isaiah’s hope is not merely that Tyre will be rich again, but that what Tyre produces will no longer end with Tyre.
For further reading: Matthew 6:19–21; Revelation 21:24–26. A fitting hymn is “All My Hope on God Is Founded.”
Prayer: Lord of the sea and of every shore, expose the pride hidden in what we possess. Teach us to receive your gifts without making them our refuge, and to use them so that others may have enough. Amen.