Isaiah 23

The Fall of Tyre

¹The pronouncement concerning Tyre:

Wail, you ships of Tarshish,

For Tyre is destroyed, without house or harbor;

It is reported to them from the land of Cyprus.

²Be silent, you inhabitants of the coastland,

You merchants of Sidon;

Your messengers crossed the sea

³And were on many waters.

The grain of the Nile, the harvest of the River was her revenue;

And she was the market of nations.

⁴Be ashamed, Sidon,

For the sea speaks, the stronghold of the sea, saying,

“I have neither been in labor nor given birth,

I have neither brought up young men nor raised virgins.”

⁵When the report reaches Egypt,

They will be in anguish over the report of Tyre.

⁶Pass over to Tarshish;

Wail, you inhabitants of the coastland.

⁷Is this your jubilant city,

Whose origin is from antiquity,

Whose feet used to bring her to colonize distant places?

⁸¶Who has planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns,

Whose merchants were princes, whose traders were the honored of the earth?

⁹The Lord of armies has planned it, to defile the pride of all beauty,

To despise all the honored of the earth.

¹⁰Overflow your land like the Nile, you daughter of Tarshish,[#23:10 Lit Pass over]

There is no more restraint.

¹¹He has stretched His hand out over the sea,

He has made the kingdoms tremble;

The Lord has given a command concerning Canaan to demolish its strongholds.

¹²¶He has said, “You shall not be jubilant anymore, you crushed virgin daughter of Sidon.

Arise, pass over to Cyprus; even there you will find no rest.”

¹³Behold, the land of the Chaldeans—this is the people that did not exist; Assyria allocated it for desert creatures—they erected their siege towers, they stripped its palaces, they made it a ruin.

¹⁴Wail, you ships of Tarshish,

For your stronghold is destroyed.

¹⁵Now on that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years like the days of one king. At the end of seventy years it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute:

¹⁶Take your harp, wander around the city,

You forgotten prostitute;

Pluck the strings skillfully, sing many songs,

That you may be remembered.

¹⁷It will come about at the end of seventy years that the Lord will visit Tyre. Then she will go back to her prostitute’s wages and commit prostitution with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth.[#23:17 Lit of the earth on the face of the land]

¹⁸Her profit and her prostitute’s wages will be sacred to the Lord ; it will not be stored up or hoarded, but her profit will become sufficient food and magnificent attire for those who dwell in the presence of the Lord .