Scripture Daily

Context No. 961 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 23:1-7: in context

1The burden of Tyre. Howl, you ships of Tarshish! For it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in. From the land of Kittim it is revealed to them. 2Be still, you inhabitants of the coast, you whom the merchants of Sidon that pass over the sea have replenished. 3On great waters, the seed of the Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, was her revenue. She was the market of nations. 4Be ashamed, Sidon; for the sea has spoken, the stronghold of the sea, saying, “I have not travailed, nor given birth, neither have I nourished young men, nor brought up virgins.” 5When the report comes to Egypt, they will be in anguish at the report of Tyre. 6Pass over to Tarshish! Wail, you inhabitants of the coast! 7Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days, whose feet carried her far away to travel?

This is the opening of the oracle against Tyre, the great Phoenician port whose ships and trade reached across the known world. Isaiah calls on the ships of Tarshish to howl, because their home harbor is destroyed; the news reaches them at sea, from the coasts of Cyprus. The merchants of Sidon fall silent, the city that was the marketplace of nations, enriched by the grain of the Nile and the trade of the great waters, is laid waste. Is this your jubilant city, Isaiah asks, so ancient, whose feet carried her to settle far away?

Tyre was, in a sense, the ancient world's global economy in one city, a place whose whole identity was commerce, whose ships were everywhere, whose harbor was the crossroads of nations. And Isaiah announces that all of it can be silenced. The sailors coming home find no house and no harbor; the sea itself seems to disown the city that lived off it. The question at the end, is this your jubilant city, so ancient, carries real disbelief, the shock of watching something that seemed permanent, that had stood since ancient days and reached to the ends of the earth, simply end. The oracle is not against trade or seafaring as such; it is against the assumption of permanence, the sense a great commercial center has that its age and reach and wealth put it beyond reversal. What looked like the most established thing in the world, older than memory, is shown to be as fragile as anything else once God speaks against its pride.

What in my world seems too established and ancient to ever end, and have I quietly trusted its permanence in a way that belongs only to God?

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