Isaiah 23 · Keil and Delitzsch
Isa 23:1 The prophecy commences by introducing the trading vessels of Phoenicia on their return home, as they hear with alarm the tidings of the fate that has befallen their home. “Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entrance any more! Out of the land of the Chittaeans it is made known to them.” Even upon the open sea they hear of it as a rumour from the ships that they meet. For their voyage is a very long one: they come from the Phoenician colony on the Spanish Baetis, or the Guadalquivir, as it was called from the time of the occupation by the Moors. “ Ships of Tarshish ” are ships that sail to Tartessus (lxx inaccurately, πλοῖα Καρχηδόνος). It is not improbable that the whole of the Mediterranean may have been called “the sea to Tarshish;” and hence the rendering adopted by the Targum, Jerome, Luther, and others, naves maris (see Humboldt, Kosmos , ii. 167, 415). These ships are to howl ( hēlı̄lū instead of the feminine, as in Isa 32:11 ) because of the devastation that has taken place (it is easy to surmise that Tyre has been the victim); for the home and harbour, which the sailors were rejoicing at the prospect of being able to enter once more, have both been swept away. Cyprus was the last station on this homeward passage. The Chittim (written in the legends of coins and other inscriptions with Caph and Cheth ) are the inhabitants of the Cyprian harbour of Citium and its territory. But Epiphanius, the bishop of Salamis in the island of Cyprus, says that Citium was also used as a name for the whole island, or even in a still broader sense. Cyprus, the principal mart of the Phoenicians, was the last landing-place. As soon as they touch the island, the fact which they have only heard of as a rumour upon the open sea, is fully disclosed ( niglâh ), i.e., it now becomes a clear undoubted certainty, for they are told of it by eye-witnesses who have made their escape to the island. The prophet now turns to the Phoenicians at home, who have this devastation in prospect.
Isa 23:2-3 “Be alarmed, ye inhabitants of the coast! Sidonian merchants, sailing over the sea, filled thee once. And the sowing of Sichor came upon great waters, the harvest of the Nile, her store; and she became gain for nations.” The suffixes of מלּא (to fill with wares and riches) and תּבוּאה (the bringing in, viz., into barns and granaries) refer to the word א י , which is used here as a feminine for the name of a country, and denotes the Phoenician coast, including the insular Tyre. “ Sidonian merchants ” are the Phoenicians generally, as in Homer; for the “great Sidon” of antiquity ( Zidon rabbâh , Jos 11:8 ; Jos 19:28 ) was the mother-city of Phoenicia, which so thoroughly stamped its name upon the whole nation, that Tyre is called צדנם אם upon Phoenician coins. The meaning of Isa 23:3 is not that the revenue of Tyre which accrued to it on the great unfruitful sea, was like a Nile-sowing, or an Egyptian harvest (Hitzig, Knobel). Such a simile would be a very beautiful one, but it is a very unlikely one, since the Phoenicians actually did buy up the corn-stores of Egypt, that granary of the ancient world, and housed the cargoes that were brought to them “upon great waters,” i.e., on the great Mediterranean. Sichor is a Hebraic form of Siris (the native name of the upper Nile, according to Dionysius Perieg. and Pliny). It signifies the black river ( Meals , Eust. on Dion. Per. 222), the black slime of which gave such fertility to the land. “ The harvest of the Nile ” is not so much an explanation as an amplification. The valley of the Nile was the field for sowing and reaping, and the Phoenician coast was the barn for this valuable corn; and inasmuch as corn and other articles of trade were purchased and bartered there, it thereby became gain (constr. of sachar , Ewald, §213, a, used in the same sense as in Isa 18:1-7 , Isa 45:14 , and Pro 3:14 ), i.e., the means of gain, the source of profit or provision, to whole nations, and even to many such. Others render the word “emporium;” but sâchâr cannot have this meaning. Moreover, foreigners did not come to Phoenicia, but the Phoenicians went to them (Luzzatto).
Isa 23:4-5 The address to the whole of the coast-land now passes into an address to the ancestral city. Isa 23:4 “Shudder, O Sidon; for the sea speaketh, the fortress of the sea, thus: I have not travailed, nor given birth, nor trained up young men, brought up maidens.” The sea, or more closely considered, the fortress of the sea, i.e., the rock-island on which Neo-tyrus stood with its strong and lofty houses, lifts up its voice in lamentation. Sidon, the ancestress of Canaan, must hear with overwhelming shame how Tyre mourns the loss of her daughters, and complains that, robbed as she has been of her children, she is like a barren women. For the war to have murdered her young men and maidens, was exactly the same as if she had never given birth to them or brought them up. Who is there that does not recognise in this the language of Isaiah (compare Isa 1:2 )? - Even in Egypt the fate of Phoenicia produces alarm. Isa 23:5 “When the report cometh to Egypt, they tremble at the report from Tzor.” In the protasis ( Isa 23:5 ) lemitzraim (to Egypt) the verb “cometh” is implied; the Caph in Isa 23:5 signifies simultaneousness, as in Isa 18:4 and Isa 30:19 (Ges. Thes . p. 650). The news of the fall of Tyre spreads universal terror in Egypt, because its own prosperity depended upon Tyre, which was the great market for its corn; and when such a bulwark had fallen, a similar fate awaited itself.
Isa 23:6-9 The inhabitants of Tyre, who desired to escape from death or transportation, are obliged to take refuge in the colonies, and the farther off the better: not in Cyprus, not in Carthage (as at the time when Alexander attacked the insular Tyre), but in Tartessus itself, the farthest off towards the west, and the hardest to reach. “Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the coast! Is this your fate, thou full of rejoicing, whose origin is from the days of the olden time, whom her feet carried far away to settle? Who hath determined such a thing concerning Tzor, the distributor of crowns, whose merchants are princes, whose traders are the chief men of the earth? Jehovah of hosts hath determined it, to desecrate the pomp of every kind of ornament, to dishonour the chief men of the earth, all of them.” The exclamation “howl ye” ( hēillu ) implies their right to give themselves up to their pain. In other cases complaint is unmanly, but here it is justifiable (compare Isa 15:4 ). In Isa 23:7 the question arises, whether ‛allizâh is a nominative predicate, as is generally assumed ( “Is this, this deserted heap of ruins, your formerly rejoicing city?” ), or a vocative. We prefer the latter, because there is nothing astonishing in the omission of the article in this case ( Isa 22:2 ; Ewald, 327, a ); whereas in the former case, although it is certainly admissible (see Isa 32:13 ), it is very harsh (compare Isa 14:16 ), and the whole expression a very doubtful one to convey the sense of לכם אשר עליזה קריה הזאת. To ‛allizâh there is attached the descriptive, attributive clause: whose origin ( kadmâh , Eze 16:55 ) dates from the days of the olden time; and then a second “whose feet brought her far away ( raglaim construed as a masculine, as in Jer 13:16 , for example) to dwell in a foreign land. This is generally understood as signifying transportation by force into an enemy’s country. But Luzzatto very properly objects to this, partly on the ground that רגליה יבלוּה (her feet carried her) is the strongest expression that can be used for voluntary emigration, to which lâgūr (to settle) also corresponds; and partly because we miss the antithetical ועתּה, which we should expect with this interpretation. The reference is to the trading journeys which extended “far away” (whether by land or sea), and to the colonies, i.e., the settlements founded in those distant places, that leading characteristic of the Tyro-Phoenician people (this is expressed in the imperfect by yobiluâh , quam portabant ; gur is the most appropriate word to apply to such settlements: for mērâchōk , see at Isa 17:13 ). Sidon was no doubt older than Tyre, but Tyre was also of primeval antiquity. Strabo speaks of its as the oldest Phoenician city “after Sidon;” Curtius calls it vetustate originis insignis ; and Josephus reckons the time from the founding of Tyre to the building of Solomon’s temple as 240 years ( Ant. viii. 3, 1; compare Herod. ii. 44). Tyre is called hammaēatirâh , not as wearing a crown (Vulg. quondam coronata ), but as a distributor of crowns (Targum). Either would be suitable as a matter of fact; but the latter answers better to the hiphil (as hikrı̄n , hiphrı̄s , which are expressive of results produced from within outwards, can hardly be brought into comparison). Such colonies as Citium, Tartessus, and at first Carthage, were governed by kings appointed by the mother city, and dependent upon her. Her merchants were princes (compare Isa 10:8 ), the most honoured of the earth; נכבּדּי acquires a superlative meaning from the genitive connection (Ges. §119, 2). From the fact that the Phoenicians had the commerce of the world in their hands, a merchant was called cena‛ani or cena‛an (Hos 12:8; from the latter, not from cin‛âni , the plural cin‛ânim which we find here is formed), and the merchandise cin‛âh . The verb chillēl , to desecrate or profane, in connection with the “pomp of every kind of ornament,” leads us to think more especially of the holy places of both insular and continental Tyre, among which the temple of Melkarth in the new city of the former was the most prominent (according to the Arrian, Anab . ii. 16, παλαιότατον ὧν μνήμη ἀνθρωπίνη διασώζεται). These glories, which were thought so inviolable, Jehovah will profane. “ To dishonour the chief men: ” lehâkēl ( ad ignominiam deducere , Vulg.) as in Isa 8:22.
Isa 23:10 The consequence of the fall of Tyre is, that the colonies achieve their independence, Tartessus being mentioned by way of example. “Overflow thy land like the Nile, O daughter of Tarshish! No girdle restrains thee any longer.” The girdle ( mēzach ) is the supremacy of Tyre, which has hitherto restrained all independent action on the part of the colony. Now they no longer need to wait in the harbour for the ships of the mother city, no longer to dig in the mines as her tributaries for silver and other metals. The colonial territory is their own freehold now, and they can spread themselves over it like the Nile when it passes beyond its banks and overflows the land. Koppe has already given this as the meaning of Isa 23:10.
Isa 23:11-12 The prophet now proceeds to relate, as it were, to the Pheonicio-Spanish colony, the daughter, i.e., the population of Tartessus, what has happened to the mother country. “His hand hath He stretched over the sea, thrown kingdoms into trembling; Jehovah hath given commandment concerning Kena'an, to destroy her fortresses. And He said, Thou shalt not rejoice any further, thou disgraced one, virgin daughter of Sidon! Get up to Kittim, go over; there also shalt thou not find rest.” There is no ground whatever for restricting the “kingdoms” ( mamlâcoth ) to the several small Phoenician states (compare Isa 19:2 ). Jehovah, reaching over the sea, has thrown the lands of Hither Asia and Egypto-Ethiopia into a state of the most anxious excitement, and has summoned them as instruments of destruction with regard to Kenaēan (אל, like על in Est 4:5 ). Phoenicia called itself Kena‛an (Canaan); but this is the only passage in the Old Testament in which the name occurs in this most restricted sense. לשׁמיד, for להשׁמיד, as in Num 5:22; Amo 8:4. The form מעזניה is more rare, but it is not a deformity, as Knobel and others maintain. There are other examples of the same resolution of the reduplication and transposition of the letters (it stands for מענזיה, possibly a Phoenician word; see Hitzig, Grabschrift , p. 16, and Levi, Phoenizische Studien , p. 17), viz., תּמנוּ in Lam 3:22 (vid., at Psa 64:7 ), and קבנו in Num 23:13, at least according to the Jewish grammar (see, however, Ewald, §250, b ). Böttcher derives the form from מעזן, a supposed diminutive; see, however, Jesurun , pp. 212-216. “Virgin of the daughter of Sidon” (equivalent to “virgin daughter of Sidon,” two epexegetical genitives; Ewald, §289, c ) is synonymous with Kena‛an . The name of the ancestral city (compare Isa 37:22 ) has here become the name of the whole nation that has sprung from it. Hitherto this nation has been untouched, like a virgin, but now it resembles one ravished and defiled. If now they flee across to Cyprus ( cittiyim or cittim ), there will be no rest for them even there, because the colony, emancipated from the Phoenician yoke, will only be too glad to rid herself to the unwelcome guests from the despotic mother country.
Isa 23:13-14 The prophet now proceeds to describe the fate of Phoenicia. “Behold the Chaldean land: this people that has not been ( Asshur - it hath prepared the same for desert beasts ) - they set up their siege-towers, destroy the palaces of Kena'an, make it a heap of ruins. Mourn, he ships of Tarshish: for your fortress is laid waste.” The general meaning of Isa 23:13 , as the text now runs, is that the Chaldeans have destroyed Kenaēan , and in fact Tyre. הקימוּ (they set up) points to the plural idea of “this people,” and בּחוּניו ( chethib בּחיניו) to the singular idea of the same; on the other hand, the feminine suffixes relate to Tyre. “They (the Chaldeans) have laid bare the palaces ( 'armenoth , from 'armoneth ) of Tyre,” i.e., have thrown them down, or burned them down to their very foundations (עורר, from ערר = ערה, Psa 137:7 , like ערער in Jer 51:58 ); it (the Chaldean people) has made her (Tyre) a heap of rubbish. So far the text is clear, and there is no ground for hesitation. But the question arises, whether in the words לציּים יסדהּ אשּׁוּר Asshur is the subject or the object. In the former case the prophet points to the land of the Chaldeans, for the purpose of describing the instruments of divine wrath; and having called them “a nation which has not been” (היה לא), explains this by saying that Asshur first founded the land which the Chaldeans now inhabit for them, i.e., wild hordes ( Psa 72:9 ); or better still (as tziyyim can hardly signify mountain hordes), that Asshur has made it (this nation, עם fem., as in Jer 8:5 ; Exo 5:16 ) into dwellers in steppes (Knobel), which could not be conceived of in any other way than that Asshur settled the Chaldeans, who inhabited the northern mountains, in the present so-called land of Chaldea, and thus made the Chaldeans into a people, i.e., a settled, cultivated people, and a people bent on conquest and taking part in the history of the world (according to Knobel, primarily as a component part of the Assyrian army). But this view, which we meet with even in Calvin, is exposed to a grave difficulty. It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the Chaldeans, who were descendants of Nahor, according to Gen 22:22 , and therefore of Semitic descent, Arpachshad ( Gen 10:22 ), probably the ancestor of the oldest Chaldeans, was also Semitic, whether his name is equivalent to Armachshad (the Chaldean high-land) or not. Arrapachitis rings like Albagh , the name of the table-land between the lake of Urmia and that of Van, according to which shad was the common Armenian termination for names of places. came down from the mountains which bound Armenia, Media, and Assyria, having been forced out by the primitive migration of the Arians from west to east; although the more modern hypothesis, which represents them as a people of Tatar descent, and as mixing among the Shemites of the countries of the Euphrates and Tigris, has no historical support whatever, the very reverse being the case, according to Gen 10, since Babylon was of non-Semitic or Cushite origin, and therefore the land of Chaldea, as only a portion of Babylonia (Strabo, xvi. 1, 6), was the land of the Shemites. But the idea that the Assyrians brought them down from the mountains into the lowlands, though not under Ninus and Semiramis, The same view is held by Oppert, though he regards the Casdim as the primitive Turanian (Tatar) inhabitants of Shinar, and supposes this passage to relate to their subjugation by the Semitic Assyrians. as Vitringa supposes, but about the time of Shalmanassar (Ges., Hitzig, Knobel, and others), For an impartial examination of this migration or transplantation hypothesis, which is intimately connected with the Scythian hypothesis, see M. V. Niebuhr’s Geschichte Assurs und Babels seit Phul (1857, pp. 152-154). Rawlinson ( Monarchies , i. 71-74) decidedly rejects the latter as at variance with the testimonies of Scripture, of Berosus, and of the monuments. is pure imagination, and merely an inference drawn from this passage. For this reason I have tried to give a different interpretation to the clause לציּים יסדהּ אשּׁוּר in my Com. on Habakkuk (p. 22), viz., “Asshur - it has assigned the same to the beasts of the desert.” That Asshur may be used not only pre-eminently, but directly, for Nineveh (like Kena‛an for Tzor ), admits of no dispute, since even at the present day the ruins are called Arab. 'l - âṯūr , and this is probably a name applied to Nineveh in the arrow-headed writings also (Layard, Nineveh and its Remains ). The word tziyyim is commonly applied to beasts of the wilderness (e.g., Isa 13:21 ), and לציּים יסד for ציּה שׂם (used of Nineveh in Zep 2:13-14) may be explained in accordance with Psa 104:8. The form of the parenthetical clause, however, would be like that of the concluding clause of Amo 1:11. But what makes me distrustful even of this view is not a doctrinal ground (Winer, Real Wörterbuch , i. 218), but one taken from Isaiah’s own prophecy. Isaiah undoubtedly sees a Chaldean empire behind the Assyrian; but this would be the only passage in which he prophesied (and that quite by the way) how the imperial power would pass from the latter to the former. It was the task of Nahum and Zephaniah to draw this connecting line. It is true that this argument is not sufficient to outweigh the objections that can be brought against the other view, which makes the text declare a fact that is never mentioned anywhere else; but it is important nevertheless. For this reason it is possible, indeed, that Ewald’s conjecture is a right one, and that the original reading of the text was כּנענים ארץ הן. Read in this manner, the first clause runs thus: “Behold the land of the Canaaneans: this people has come to nothing; Asshur has prepared it (their land) for the beasts of the desert.” It is true that היה לא generally means not to exist, or not to have been (Oba 1:16); but there are also cases in which לא is used as a kind of substantive (cf., Jer 33:25 ), and the words mean to become or to have become nothing ( Job 6:21 ; Eze 21:32 , and possibly also Isa 15:6 ). Such an alteration of the text is not favoured, indeed, by any of the ancient versions. For our own part, we still abide by the explanation we have given in the Commentary on Habakkuk , not so much for this reason, as because the seventy years mentioned afterwards are a decisive proof that the prophet had the Chaldeans and not Asshur in view, as the instruments employed in executing the judgment upon Tyre. The prophet points out the Chaldeans - that nation which (although of primeval antiquity, Jer 5:15 ) had not yet shown itself as a conqueror of the world (cf., Hab 1:6 ), having been hitherto subject to the Assyrians; but which had now gained the mastery after having first of all destroyed Asshur, i.e., Nineveh This destruction of Nineveh was really such an one as could be called yesor l'ziyyim (a preparation for beasts of the desert), for it has been ever since a heap of ruins, which the earth gradually swallowed up; so that when Xenophon went past it, he was not even told that these were the ruins of the ancient Ninus. On the later buildings erected upon the ruins, see Marcus v. Niebuhr, p. 203. (namely, with the Medo-Babylonian army under Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian empire, in 606 b.c.) - as the destroyers of the palaces of Tyre. With the appeal to the ships of Tarshish to pour out their lamentation, the prophecy returns in Isa 23:14 to the opening words in Isa 23:1. According to Isa 23:4 , the fortress here is insular Tyre. As the prophecy thus closes itself by completing the circle, Isa 23:15-18 might appear to be a later addition. This is no more the case, however, here, than in the last part of chapter 19. Those critics, indeed, who do not acknowledge any special prophecies that are not vaticinia post eventum , are obliged to assign Isa 23:15-18 to the Persian era.
Isa 23:15-16 The prophet here foretells the rise of Tyre again at the close of the Chaldean world-wide monarchy. “And it will come to pass in that day, that Tzor will be forgotten seventy years, equal to the days of one king; after the end of the seventy years, Tzor will go, according to the song of the harlot. Take the guitar, sweep through the city, O forgotten harlot! Play bravely, sing zealously, that thou mayest be remembered!” The “ days of a king ” are a fixed and unchangeable period, for which everything is determined by the one sovereign will (as is the case more especially in the East), and is therefore stereotyped. The seventy years are compared to the days of such a king. Seventy is well fitted to be the number used to denote a uniform period of this kind, being equal to 10 x 7, i.e., a compact series of heptads of years ( shabbathoth ). But the number is also historical, prophecy being the power by which the history of the future was “periodized” beforehand in this significant manner. They coincide with the seventy years of Jeremiah (compare 2Ch 36:21 ), that is to say, with the duration of the Chaldean rule. During this period Tyre continued with its world-wide commerce in a state of involuntary repose. “ Tyre will be forgotten: ” v'nishcachath is not a participle (Böttcher), but the perf. cons. which is required here, and stands for ונשׁכּחה with an original ת fem. (cf., Isa 7:14 ; Psa 118:23 ). After the seventy years (that is to say, along with the commencement of the Persian rule) the harlot is welcomed again. She is like a bayadere or troubadour going through the streets with song and guitar, and bringing her charms into notice again. The prophecy here falls into the tone of a popular song, as in Isa 5:1 and Isa 27:2. It will be with Tyre as with such a musician and dancer as the one described in the popular song.
Isa 23:17 When it begins again to make love to all the world, it will get rich again from the gain acquired by this worldly intercourse. “And it will come to pass at the end of the seventy years: Jehovah will visit Tzor, and she comes again to her hire, and commits prostitution with all the kingdoms of the earth on the broad surface of the globe.” Such mercantile trading as hers, which is only bent upon earthly advantages, is called zânâh , on account of its recognising none of the limits opposed by God, and making itself common to all the world, partly because it is a prostitution of the soul, and partly because from the very earliest times the prostitution of the body was also a common thing in markets and fairs, more especially in those of Phoenicia (as the Phoenicians were worshippers of Astarte). Hence the gain acquired by commerce, which Tyre had now secured again, is called 'ethnân ( Deu 23:19 ), with a feminine suffix, according to the Masora without mappik (Ewald, §247, a ).