CHAPTER 23

(715 B.C.)

THE MESSAGE TO TYRE: DESOLATION

¹The 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 Chittim it is revealed to them. (Tyre, in its early days, was a great stronghold. Tarshish refers to Spain and Chittim refers to Cyprus.)

²Be still, you inhabitants of the isle; you whom the merchants of Zidon, who pass over the sea, have replenished. (The general meaning of the words, have replenished, concern Zidon, which was secondary to Tyre and, for the most part, acquiesced to Tyrian supremacy.)

³And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations. (Sihor is another name for the Nile River in Egypt. The phrase, mart of nations, has to do with Tyres being somewhat of a clearinghouse for great cargo vessels from Egypt and other countries.)

⁴Be you ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea has spoken, even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins. (This Passage has to do with Zidons statement respecting Tyre. Even though Tyre was the stronger of the two cities, it seems that Zidon in essence had founded this great trade mart; so Zidon was considered to be Tyres mother. Zidon would be so weakened by Tyres fall that she declared that she would never found or begin another city.)

⁵As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be sorely pained at the report of Tyre. (The Egyptians bore no great affection towards foreign nations. They were a people whose charity began and ended at home. But the fall of Tyre was always a shock to them and they felt it portended evil to themselves.)

⁶Pass you over to Tarshish; howl, you inhabitants of the isle. (When Nebuchadnezzar would lay siege to the city, approximately 100 years into the future, many of the inhabitants would flee, taking their wealth with them. So when the city was finally taken, even after a thirteen-year siege, Nebuchadnezzar found very little of value. It so enraged him that he destroyed the place completely.)

⁷Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her own feet shall carry her afar off to sojourn. (The feet of Tyre were her ships. As a man flees upon his feet, so the Tyrians would flee upon their ships.)

⁸Who has taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the Earth? (The question as to Who has taken this counsel against Tyre? will be answered in the next Verse.)

⁹The LORD of Hosts has purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the Earth. (This Verse tells us that God was the One Who took counsel against Tyre. It presents the judgment of Tyre as an earnest of the universal judgment yet to come upon the world, which will abase the pride of all human glory and cover with contempt the great ones of the Earth.)

¹⁰Pass through your land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength. (The announcement is here given by the Holy Spirit that colony cities, such as Tarshish, were no more to be subject to the bonds of Tyre.)

¹¹He stretched out His Hand over the sea, He shook the kingdoms: the LORD has given a commandment against the merchant city, to destroy the strongholds thereof. (He is the Lord of Glory. He would give instructions for the destruction of the city, because of her pride.)

¹²And he said, You shall no more rejoice, O you oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim; there also shall you have no rest. (The meaning of the Passage is that once the quest by the Babylonians commences, they will not cease until they have accomplished their intended purpose.)

¹³Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them who dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin. (The Prophet points to Assyria, a stronger and much more ancient government, and urged that it would fall before the king of the Chaldeans. How much more surely would Tyre fall!)

¹⁴Howl, you ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste. (Alexanders destruction of the city was the final and complete fulfillment of the Prophecy. So the Prophecy would be several hundreds of years in its total fulfillment. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.)

RESTORATION AFTER SEVENTY YEARS

¹⁵And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot. (The phrase, the days of one king, means the duration of the Babylonian kingdom. It lasted exactly seventy years. During the seventy years, Jerusalem was a captive and Tyre, a desolation [Jer. 25:11].)

¹⁶Take an harp, go about the city, you harlot who has been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that you may be remembered. (In addressing Tyre as a harlot, the Prophet does not seem to mean more than that her aims were, or at any rate had been, selfish and worldly such as to sever man and God. Hers had been the covetousness which is idolatry [Col. 3:5].)

¹⁷And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the Earth. (While Tyre regained her power, wealth, and fame, even as here recorded, the new city was taken by Alexander the Great, which was about 250 years after the former one had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.)

¹⁸And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them who dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing. (Oftentimes, the Holy Spirit will give Prophecies that will span from one age to the other without a break in the sentence. Such is the case, evidently, in this particular Prophecy.

In essence, this Verse looks forward to the coming Millennium, when Tyre will then be blessed by Christ, with the old times then forgotten.)