The big picture
Isaiah 23 treats Tyre not simply as a city but as the center of a commercial world. Ships hear the news of its fall before reaching the harbor, merchants and grain routes feel the loss, and the sea itself is pictured as bereaved. Tyre's antiquity, wealth, and social rank cannot protect it from the LORD's purpose to bring proud glory low. Even migration across the sea does not guarantee rest. After the announcement of ruin, however, the chapter takes an unexpected turn. Tyre is forgotten for a bounded period and then returns to the business that once made its name. The restored commerce is not romanticized, but its revenue receives a new destination. Merchandise and hire become "holiness to the LORD," not treasure stored for prestige, and they provide food and durable clothing. Commercial abundance survives, but hoarding does not get the last word.
In this chapter
- News Reaches the Ships Before They Reach the Port Isaiah 23:1-7
Tyre's disaster is first heard from the perspective of ships that expected a harbor and find there is no entering in.
- Merchants Who Looked Like Princes Isaiah 23:8-12
Tyre's merchants are "princes" and its traffickers are among the honorable of the earth, which means commerce has become more than income.
- A Ruined Land Becomes a Warning to the Harbor Isaiah 23:13-14
The Chaldean reference is compressed enough to resist a neat historical reconstruction, but its function inside Tyre's oracle is clearer than every pronoun in the verse.
- The City's Earnings Receive a New Destination Isaiah 23:15-18
For seventy years Tyre is forgotten, an astonishing condition for a city whose identity depended on being remembered by customers across the sea.
Scripture beside the summary
Isaiah · King James Version · 18Isaiah 23:1-7
News Reaches the Ships Before They Reach the Port
Tyre's disaster is first heard from the perspective of ships that expected a harbor and find there is no entering in. That choice immediately makes the city's fall larger than its walls. Merchants, grain, distant coasts, and maritime traffic all depended on the same commercial center, so news of Tyre's loss travels through the network that once carried its prosperity. The KJV's "mart of nations" captures its role as an international marketplace. Then Isaiah makes the sea speak like a parent who no longer gives birth or raises the people who filled that world. The image turns economic disruption into human emptiness. Tyre's age makes the displacement worse rather than safer. An ancient, joyous city would seem to have permanence behind it, yet its inhabitants must travel abroad on their own feet. Long establishment proves to be a history, not an exemption.
Deep dive
The oracle addresses ships first. Tyre's disaster is heard through vessels that depended on its harbor, and the report travels across the same waters that once carried prosperity. The address widens the loss beyond a single city wall. A trading center falls, and people elsewhere discover that part of their own world has fallen with it.
The KJV's "mart of nations" means a marketplace of nations. Grain from the river country becomes revenue, and merchants replenish the coast. The wealth is created through connection, which also explains how widely the shock spreads. The passage's geography is economic as well as physical.
Then the sea itself speaks as a bereaved parent, denying the birth and nurture of the people who filled this commercial world. The figure drains the bustling coast of its human future. Tyre's antiquity makes displacement more severe: the ancient, joyous city must send its people abroad on their own feet. Long establishment has supplied an impressive past, not an exemption from departure.
Words to trace: howl, inhabitants, isle, report, Tarshish, Tyre
Verse-by-verse path
- Isaiah 23:1
“Ships of Tarshish” were the big ocean-going vessels built for the long run to Tarshish, most likely Tartessus in southern Spain; Jonah boarded one at Joppa (Jonah 1:3). Chittim is Cyprus, named for its Phoenician port of Kition. The homebound fleet hears the news at Cyprus, a day or two short of home.
- Isaiah 23:2
“Be still” means be struck dumb. Tyre was itself an island, a fortress city about half a mile offshore, until Alexander built a causeway to it in 332 BC. Sidon, twenty odd miles north, was the older city, and its merchants had filled Tyre’s warehouses.
- Isaiah 23:3
Sihor is the Nile, from an Egyptian name meaning “pool of Horus”; Jeremiah 2:18 asks Judah what it wants with “the waters of Sihor”. Egypt grew the grain and Phoenician ships carried it. Tyre’s profit was on the carrying, not the growing.
- Isaiah 23:4
“The strength of the sea” is the sea’s fortress, Tyre itself. Sidon is ashamed because Sidon was the mother city: Genesis 10:15 makes Sidon the firstborn of Canaan, and verse 12 calls Tyre “daughter of Zidon”. The sea’s speech is a childless woman’s; it has no sons or daughters to show.
- Isaiah 23:5
“Sorely pained” is the writhing of labour. The link to Egypt runs through verse 3: Tyre was the carrier of Egypt’s grain, so the news from the harbour is felt in the Nile valley as a loss of trade, and Egypt feels the fall as if it were its own.
- Isaiah 23:6
The Phoenicians had planted colonies all over the western Mediterranean, Carthage the most famous among them, and Tarshish in Spain at the far end. “Pass over” is the advice to the refugees: take ship for the colonies. The flight follows the trade routes the city built.
- Isaiah 23:7
The priests of Tyre told Herodotus that their city had been founded 2,300 years before his visit. The last line can also be read as a description of Tyre’s past, whose own feet “carried her afar off to sojourn”, sending colonists abroad. Now the same feet carry exiles.
Isaiah 23:1-7
King James Version1The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye 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.
2Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.
3And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.
4Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath 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.
5As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be sorely pained at the report of Tyre.
6Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle.
7Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her own feet shall carry her afar off to sojourn.
Isaiah 23:8-12
Merchants Who Looked Like Princes
Tyre's merchants are "princes" and its traffickers are among the honorable of the earth, which means commerce has become more than income. It has become rank. Isaiah asks who could purpose the fall of a city whose wealth has translated into social authority, then names the LORD of hosts. His aim is directed at the pride attached to glory, not at a catalog in which every transaction must first be proven dishonest. The point is that honor acquired through trade does not become untouchable because many nations recognize it. Even the sea provides no exit from that purpose. The LORD's hand stretches over the waters, kingdoms shake, and the displaced are told to cross toward Chittim only to learn that another route does not automatically provide another secure home. The Book of Isaiah distinguishes mobility from rest. A network can move people without giving them refuge.
Deep dive
Tyre's merchants are described as princes, and its traders as the earth's honored people. Commerce has become a form of rank. Isaiah is attentive not merely to possessions but to the social authority that prosperity gives their owners. The question about who has planned this city's fall is answered with the LORD of hosts.
His purpose is expressed in the lowering of proud glory and worldly honor. That explanation joins Tyre to the larger argument of chapters 2 and 13: what human beings elevate is not thereby beyond the LORD's reach. The oracle does not need to identify every transaction as fraudulent to expose the pride attached to the city's standing.
The stretched hand reaches over the sea itself. Water is therefore not an escape from the field of judgment. The displaced are told to cross to Chittim, yet rest will not automatically be waiting there. The commercial network offers routes for movement, but a route is not the same thing as a secure destination.
Words to trace: city, daughter, earth, honourable, LORD, arise
Verse-by-verse path
- Isaiah 23:8
“Crowning city” means the city that gave crowns, setting up kings in its colonies. “Traffickers” is kena’aneha, literally “her Canaanites”; the name of the land became the word for a merchant, as in Hosea 12:7 and Proverbs 31:24. The question “who?” is answered in the next verse.
- Isaiah 23:9
“Stain” is chalal, to profane something holy. “Bring into contempt” is qalal, to make light, and the “honourable” are nikhbaddim, the heavy ones, from the root kavod. The honoured, weighty people are made light. The LORD’s purpose is aimed at glory itself, “the pride of all glory”.
- Isaiah 23:10
The Hebrew here is obscure. The Greek reads “work your land”, as if the colonies, cut off from the mother city’s trade, must turn to farming. “No more strength” may be “no more harbour” or “no more restraint”, the word being rare.
- Isaiah 23:11
The stretched hand over the sea is Moses’ gesture at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). “The merchant city” is simply Canaan in Hebrew, “against Canaan”, the word used for trader in verse 8. Tyre and Sidon were the heart of what remained of Canaanite civilisation.
- Isaiah 23:12
The “oppressed virgin” is a city never taken before, now violated. When Sennacherib marched west in 701 BC, Luli king of Sidon and Tyre fled by ship to Cyprus, as Sennacherib records. Cyprus gave no rest: under Esarhaddon, Cyprus’s own kings sent tribute to Nineveh.
Isaiah 23:8-12
King James Version8Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth?
9The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth.
10Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.
11He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms: the LORD hath given a commandment against the merchant city, to destroy the strong holds thereof.
12And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim; there also shalt thou have no rest.
Isaiah 23:13-14
A Ruined Land Becomes a Warning to the Harbor
The Chaldean reference is compressed enough to resist a neat historical reconstruction, but its function inside Tyre's oracle is clearer than every pronoun in the verse. Isaiah points to a land associated with towers, palaces, establishment, and ruin. The exact sequence involving Assyria has been read in more than one way, and the passage does not reward false precision. What it does provide is an exhibit. Impressive structures have existed elsewhere and ended as ruins, which makes them poor evidence that Tyre's present strength must continue. Then the ships of Tarshish hear the same command with which the chapter began: howl. The repeated address frames the collapse through the vessels that embodied Tyre's reach. A maritime power's ships remain afloat, but what made their movement commercially powerful has been laid waste. Access to the nations cannot preserve the harbor that gave that access its value.
Deep dive
Verse 13 is compressed, and its references to the Chaldeans, Assyria, towers, palaces, and ruin have produced different reconstructions of the historical setting. The KJV links Assyria with the land's establishment before describing its destruction. Other readings emphasize Assyria's reduction of the land to wilderness. The pronouns and the precise sequence resist a confident identification of one campaign from this verse alone.
What the verse clearly contributes is a land presented for inspection as evidence that impressive structures can end in ruin. Towers and palaces do not preserve the strength they advertise. The comparison belongs to the oracle's treatment of Tyre's supposedly secure standing, even when every historical detail cannot be reconstructed.
The ships are then commanded to howl again, recalling the chapter's opening address. Their strength has been laid waste. The repeated address forms a frame around the disaster: the vessels that gave Tyre access to the nations must now carry the news of its loss.
Words to trace: Assyrian, Chaldeans, dwell, founded, Howl, laid
Verse-by-verse path
- Isaiah 23:13
“Them that dwell in the wilderness” are desert creatures, and the verse may mean that Assyria turned the land into a lair for wild beasts. Sennacherib sacked Babylon in 689 BC and diverted water over its site. Whatever the exact sense, Tyre is shown a ruin and told to look.
- Isaiah 23:14
The chapter ends its first half where it began, with the ships commanded to howl. “Your strength” is the same word as “the strength of the sea” in verse 4, the fortress that was Tyre. The ships are all afloat and undamaged; it is their harbour that is gone.
Isaiah 23:13-14
King James Version13Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin.
14Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste.
Isaiah 23:15-18
The City's Earnings Receive a New Destination
For seventy years Tyre is forgotten, an astonishing condition for a city whose identity depended on being remembered by customers across the sea. Isaiah pictures its return with a woman taking up a harp and singing through the streets until attention comes back. The image is not flattering, and renewed trade is not treated as proof that nothing needed to change. Tyre resumes its hire among the kingdoms and is recognizable in the same commercial pursuit. The surprise comes in verse 18. Merchandise and hire become "holiness to the LORD," and the practical consequence is that the proceeds are not stored away. They become food and durable clothing for those who dwell before him. The Book of Isaiah therefore ends the oracle neither with permanent economic death nor with simple restoration of prestige. Wealth returns, but its destination changes from accumulation to provision.
Deep dive
The seventy years are compared with "the days of one king," an expression whose precise historical reckoning is not explained here. The emphasis falls on a bounded period of obscurity. Tyre's name, once carried by its trade, has been forgotten; its return is pictured through a woman taking up a harp and singing until she is remembered again.
The harlot image depicts a renewed pursuit of customers among the kingdoms. Isaiah does not replace it with a flattering portrait when business returns. The commercial city is recognizable in its old methods of seeking attention and reward. Recovery of revenue is not, by itself, the chapter's surprising development.
That development comes in the use of the revenue. Merchandise and hire become "holiness to the LORD," and the passage immediately explains the practical effect: the proceeds are not hoarded but provide adequate food and lasting clothing for those before him. The oracle ends neither with permanent commercial extinction nor with wealth simply restored to its old prestige. It ends with abundance given a different destination.
Words to trace: LORD, seventy, Tyre, years, forgotten, harlot
Verse-by-verse path
- Isaiah 23:15
Seventy years is also Jeremiah’s span for Babylon’s rule (Jeremiah 25:11). “The days of one king” may mean a lifetime, “threescore years and ten” (Psalm 90:10), since kings did not reign that long. The phrase “sing as an harlot” announces a song, which the next verse quotes.
- Isaiah 23:16
The verse is a popular street song, short lines and a catchy beat, about a prostitute past her prime trying to win old customers back. Ezekiel 26:13 announces the opposite for Tyre, “the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard”. Isaiah lets the harp play again.
- Isaiah 23:17
“Visit” is paqad, the verb used when “the LORD visited Sarah” and she conceived (Genesis 21:1), a return of fortune. Tyre does revive and go back to its trade. The word for her “hire” is etnan, a prostitute’s fee, and the next verse turns it into something no one would expect.
- Isaiah 23:18
Deuteronomy 23:18 forbade bringing “the hire of a whore” into the house of the LORD. Here that very fee becomes “holiness to the LORD”, the words engraved on the gold plate of the high priest’s turban (Exodus 28:36). Ezra 3:7 records Tyrians bringing cedar for the second temple, paid in food, drink and oil.
Isaiah 23:15-18
King James Version15And 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.
16Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.
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.
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 that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.
Questions to keep in mind while reading
- Identify the historical crisis, covenant failure, warning, and promised hope.
- Distinguish the prophet’s immediate audience from later biblical connections.
- Do not turn present-day headlines into confident fulfillment claims without textual evidence.
Text first
Where readers differ
The chapter summary begins with what the passage says and how its parts fit together. It does not assume one denomination has already settled every question. Where a conclusion depends on a tradition, literary theory, or historical reconstruction, that dependence is named openly.
The KJV text is presented first. Interpretive conclusions are labeled, and differences are introduced only when they help a reader understand why serious communities do not always reach the same answer.
Comparative interpretive notes for this chapter are in preparation. Until reviewed notes are ready, this page separates the KJV text from summary and application without claiming that serious readers agree on every question.
Questions beneath the surface
- What account of God, human freedom, responsibility, and the good life emerges from Isaiah 23?
- Which tension does the chapter refuse to resolve quickly?
- What changes when the chapter is read as part of the whole canon rather than as an isolated moral lesson?
- Where might a sincere reader confuse a familiar tradition with something the text states directly?
Questions for serious personal contemplation
These open-ended questions make room for tension, honest response, prayer, and conclusions that remain accountable to the chapter.
Observe without rushing
What part of Isaiah 23 makes you stop, feel unsettled, or feel surprised, and why?
Which detail in the passage would be easiest to overlook? How does that detail change your understanding?
Where do you see tension between what happens and this focus: Isaiah 23 develops its own movement around Tyre, LORD, city, Tarshish, earth?
What important question does the passage leave open instead of resolving quickly?
Examine your inner life honestly
Which person, response, fear, or desire in the passage feels most like your own life right now?
What assumption about God, other people, or yourself does this text challenge?
Which part would you rather soften, avoid, or explain away too quickly? What might that reaction reveal?
If this Scripture could ask you one direct question, what do you think it would ask?
Respond with wisdom and courage
What do you need to remember, confess, grieve, thank God for, or trust after reading this passage?
How might another faithful person read this situation differently without ignoring the text?
What obedient response would be costly, uncomfortable, or slow, yet still faithful to Scripture?
What question will you carry into prayer this week, and which verses will you keep in front of you?
Music and video connected to the passage
Related media appears when its Scripture reference overlaps this study. Music and video can illuminate a theme while the biblical text remains the foundation.
