Isaiah 23 explained: The Fall of a Great Trading City

Ships hear the news (vv. 1-5)

Tyre was a rich port on an island off the coast of today's Lebanon, and its long distance trading ships hear at Cyprus that their home harbor is gone. Sidon, the older city Tyre grew from, and Egypt, whose Nile grain Tyre shipped and sold, grieve, while the sea mourns like a mother left childless.

A proud old city falls (vv. 6-9)

People flee to distant colonies, and the poem asks if this ruin is really the ancient, partying city whose merchants lived like royalty. The answer given is that the LORD planned it, to bring down pride and fame that seemed untouchable.

The whole coast shaken (vv. 10-14)

The LORD stretches his hand over the sea, the strongholds of the coastland called Phoenicia fall, and even escape to Cyprus brings no rest. Verse 13 is very hard to translate, and scholars disagree on whether the chapter has in view Assyrian attacks, Babylon's thirteen year siege of Tyre, or its later conquest by Alexander the Great.

Forgotten for seventy years (vv. 15-16)

Tyre will drop out of sight for seventy years, likely a round number for about a lifetime. Then it will try to win back customers like a forgotten prostitute singing in the streets, a blunt image for a city that will trade with anyone for profit.

Profits set apart for God (vv. 17-18)

When the LORD restores Tyre its trade returns, but its earnings are dedicated to the LORD and used to feed and clothe those who serve him. Christians have often read this as a picture of the world's wealth one day being turned toward God's purposes.

Key verse: Isaiah 23:9

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether this prophecy points to one specific conquest of Tyre or describes a broader pattern of God humbling proud commercial powers, and on whether its hopeful ending was fulfilled in history or still lies ahead.

Something to think about

What do you think makes a person, a business or a city start to feel too successful to ever fall?