Tyre’s Destruction (23:1–14)
ISAIAH BEGINS HIS discussion of Tyre’s destruction with the word reaching the merchant ships homeward bound from the West. The exact location of “Tarshish” is unknown, though many scholars place it in Spain at Tartessus.2 When Tyrian ships stop over at “Cyprus,” they hear the news that they have no home port to return to. The reference to “the island” in 23:2 is a recognition that Tyre consisted of both a mainland city and an offshore island, with the harbor between the two. Verse 3 notes that Tyre was a shipper for Egyptian “grain.” The “Nile” Valley (“Shihor” is probably one of the Delta branches) produced much grain that was of no use to the Egyptians unless they sold it. For shipping it elsewhere they were dependent on the Phoenicians. One of the reasons the Romans were so anxious to gain control of Egypt many hundreds of years later was to get control of the grain source on which Rome itself had come to depend.
In 23:4 the Canaanite sea god Yam cries out like a parent bereft of children. Tyre, his foremost child, is gone, and it is as though he has never had any children. When the word reaches “Egypt” (23:5), the Egyptians “will be in anguish,” not only because they have lost their trading partner but also because they know that with the loss of one more country lying between them and the conquerors from Mesopotamia, their own time of terror is drawing nearer.
Verses 6–12 are addressed to the Phoenician colony of Tarshish as the Lord calls on them to think about the implications of what has happened. Tyre was a “city of revelry” (23:7), a place of wealth and pleasure. It was also an “old” city, a mother city that had given birth to Tarshish and probably more colonies that we do not know of now (23:7). These colonies were so powerful and wealthy that each had its own king, authorized by the mother city. Tyre’s merchants had become so wealthy that they were no longer considered businessmen but rather were a part of the nobility (23:8).
Yet Isaiah sees the day when all of that will come to a screeching halt. The revelry will cease (23:12), and Tarshish will have to become self-subsistent, since the Egyptian grain will no longer be available (23:10).3 What possibly explains this terrible coming disaster? The answer is to be found in the recurrence of two of Isaiah’s favorite themes: the plan of Yahweh4 and the humbling of the proud.5 Tyre will not fall by accident or because of the superior might of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Greeks. It will fall according to the eternal purposes of the Holy One of Israel.
As I have remarked elsewhere, this takes incredible faith on the part of the prophet. There seems little evidence to support such an outlandish claim. Yet God said it, and that was enough for Isaiah. Nor were the plan and purpose of God’s merely arbitrary. He had not just taken a disliking to Tyre and decided to destroy it. Rather, like all the other pagan nations (including Judah, cf. ch. 22), Tyre exalted itself against the Creator (23:9). It promulgated a lie that humans can supply their own spiritual needs and can shape deity in the image of humanity.6 In the end pride is what destroys the human race, and God’s hand is extended against pride in all its forms (see also 5:25; 9:12, 17, 21; 10:4).
As Childs points out, the RSV (and NRSV) rendering of the second and third clauses of 23:13 is attractive: “This is the people; it was not Assyria.” That is, the prophet (or in Childs’s view, a later editor) points out that Tyre was not destroyed by the Assyrians of Isaiah’s own time but by the later Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. However, that rendering is not grammatically defensible, and the rendering of NIV and several other modern translations is correct. The reader is invited to compare the fate of Babylon with that which is coming to Tyre.7 Sargon brought heavy destruction on the city of Babylon in 710 B.C. and Sennacherib even greater in 689 B.C. Thus, the two cities that begin and end the sequence of oracles are brought together here. Neither will escape the judgment planned by God.
Tyre’s Turning to the Lord (23:15–18)
LIKE EGYPT EARLIER (19:18–25), Isaiah foresees a day when Tyre will turn to the Lord. This message is set apart from the preceding verses not only by its content but also by it prose format. While the general point is clear enough—that Tyre’s profits will be given over to the Lord—some of the precise points are unclear. For instance, it is not clear what the seventy-year period in 23:15 refers to.8 Perhaps it is simply an indefinite time of punishment, with seventy referring to completeness. In any case, after this time of eclipse the Lord will permit Tyre to regain some of its former eminence. Once again it will sell itself to the merchants of the world in order to gain a profit (23:17).
Commentators have struggled with the idea of a prostitute’s profits being given over to the Lord, since this is specifically prohibited in Deuteronomy 23:18. Various solutions have been offered, none of which fully resolve the problem. It may be that the prophet is simply continuing to use prostitution as a symbol for trade, as elsewhere in the prophets. But there is nothing intrinsically sinful about trade, and its profits may be given over to the Lord without shame. In any case, the point is clear: Why fear or trust Tyre instead of the Lord, when the Lord holds Tyre’s fate in his hands?
Bridging Contexts
THIS CHAPTER SPEAKS of the dismay of colonies and clients as the mother city comes to destruction. We may think of the struggles of some of the members of the British Commonwealth as they have tried to find their own way after the collapse of the British Empire. Their relations and their trade had been largely coordinated by the mother country, and when that influence was dissipated at the end of World War II, a number of the former colonies found themselves struggling in a new world where the rules were all different.
On a more personal level, we can see the destructive nature of the relationship that psychologists have come to label codependency. It used to be thought, for instance, that all the fault was on the side of an alcoholic husband. We thought of the poor, long-suffering wife who had to put up with her husband’s constantly “falling off the wagon.” Then we were surprised to learn that after that man’s death, she married another one just like him. What happened? In fact, she had become just as dependent on the husband’s failings for her sense of identity as he had been on her for continually taking him back and drying him out again. And because from one point of view she needed his failings to support her own need for being abused and unappreciated, she was unwilling to force her husband to take some of the hard steps necessary to take responsibility for himself and overcome the addiction. To become ultimately dependent on anything other than God is finally destructive, even if it appears that we are not dependent.
Contemporary Significance
STEWARDSHIP OF WEALTH. Whereas Babylon’s love was for glory and military power, Tyre’s love was for money and the luxury and influence it could buy. As the playwright said, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”—and Tyre would have echoed that sentiment. The strange thing about money is that there is never enough. No matter how much we get, we always want more.
Few would admit to loving money for itself. This brings up pictures of Silas Marner living in one or two filthy rooms continually counting and recounting his gold coins. That is definitely not a “cool” picture. But it is difficult to separate the money from what we think it can buy. How big a house is big enough? How many cars are enough? How many television sets? How much clothing? And how much do we need for a “comfortable” retirement? The idea of moderation has gone out of fashion. What are we looking for? Comfort, pleasure, and security—the things humans have been looking for since the beginning of time. And what will give these to us? Money, lots and lots of money, the more the better!
In other words, we are little different from Tyre. We have allied ourselves, both personally and nationally, with the sources of wealth. We have forgotten or ignored Jesus’ words in Mark 10:24–25 about how hard it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven:
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Why is it so hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? Because they have found another source of trust besides God. Their allegiance has been given to another kingdom. And this can happen all too unconsciously. We start out as servants of God, but he blesses us with wealth, and all too easily we slip from one kingdom to another. No longer is our trust in the God who cares for us. Now our trust is in the money we have, which will secure us against all pain, discomfort, and insecurity. Then when God calls us to give it up, as he did the young man in the Gospel account, we cannot do it.
But the money is the Lord’s, not ours. There is the fatal error. We keep thinking how generous we are by allowing the Lord to have 10 percent of our money. But John Wesley had it right in his sermon on money when he said that we have it backward. Wesley said that for the Christian, all our money is God’s. The only issue is how much of God’s money we are going to spend on ourselves.9 As the Tyrians were to find out, their money was not theirs; whoever was stronger than they were could take it all away, and nothing they could do would stop it. Tyre’s wealth was a gift from the God of Israel, and in the end the best thing they could do was to give it back to the One who had given it to them in the first place.
Wesley has some timeless advice on the stewardship of wealth. Although he himself had a number of ascetic tendencies, he was no ascetic. He believed that a person should amass as much wealth as honesty, integrity, diligence, and brotherly love would permit. But this wealth was not to be squandered on oneself or one’s family in what he called “dainties” or “delicacies.” Rather, it should be used to advance the kingdom of God in us and in those around us. On these grounds he proposed that we should be guided by four principles:
(1) In expending this, am I acting according to my character? [That is,] am I acting herein, not as a proprietor, but as a steward of my Lord’s goods?
(2) Am I doing this in obedience to his Word? In what scripture does he require me so to do?
(3) Can I offer up this action, this expense, as a sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ?
(4) Have I reason to believe that for this very work I shall have a reward at the resurrection of the just?10
Of course, these could be made a straitjacket that would deliver us into bondage. But few American Christians are too narrow in their conception of the relation of money to our faith. We are more likely to err on the other side. We gain all we can, but then we expend the mass of it on ourselves in ways that cannot help but anger a holy God whose heart bleeds for a lost and hurting world. If we are to learn the lesson of Tyre, we must learn to let go of our wealth and relearn the reality of trusting God. Like them, we need to learn that actually we are working for God and that all our money is “set apart [i.e., holy] for the LORD” (23:18).
1. See H. Katzenstein and D. Edwards, “Tyre,” ABD, 6:686–92.
2. These ships are also referred to in 1 Kings 10:22; 22:48; Ps. 48:7; Isa. 2:16; 60:9; Ezek. 27:25; Jonah 1:3. They may have originally been ore-carriers (Semitic ršš means “to melt”), but ultimately the name came to be used for any large trading ship.
3. The meaning of the Heb. of v. 10 is uncertain. A lit. translation would be: “Go over your land like the Nile, daughter of Tarshish, there is no more strength.” The NIV reading is based on the LXX. The meaning may be that with Tyre’s constraint gone, the colonies can do what they like (see Motyer, Prophecy of Isaiah, 191).
4. See 5:26; 9:11; 10:6; 14:26; 19:12; 37:26; 41:2; 45:1; 46:10–11.
5. See. 2:11, 17; 4:2; 5:15–16; 13:19; 14:12–20; 28:1–6; 60:15.
6. Notice that the king of Tyre is described in similar language in Ezek. 28:1–19, also similar to that used to describe the king of Babylon in Isa. 14.
7. Childs, Isaiah, 168–69.
8. Motyer (Prophecy of Isaiah, 193) believes it refers to the period between Sennacherib and the rise of Nebuchadnezzar. See Oswalt, Isaiah 1–39, 435–36, for some other options.
9. J. Wesley, The Standard Sermons of John Wesley (London: Epworth, 1964), 2:326.
10. Ibid., 325