Isaiah 23

A Prophecy Against Tyre

¹A prophecy against Tyre:

Wail, you ships of Tarshish!

For Tyre is destroyed

and left without house or harbor.

From the land of Cyprus

word has come to them.

²Be silent, you people of the island

and you merchants of Sidon,

whom the seafarers have enriched.

³On the great waters

came the grain of the Shihor;

the harvest of the Nile was the revenue of Tyre,

and she became the marketplace of the nations.

⁴Be ashamed, Sidon, and you fortress of the sea,

for the sea has spoken:

“I have neither been in labor nor given birth;

I have neither reared sons nor brought up daughters.”

⁵When word comes to Egypt,

they will be in anguish at the report from Tyre.

⁶Cross over to Tarshish;

wail, you people of the island.

⁷Is this your city of revelry,

the old, old city,

whose feet have taken her

to settle in far-off lands?

⁸Who planned this against Tyre,

the bestower of crowns,

whose merchants are princes,

whose traders are renowned in the earth?

⁹The Lord Almighty planned it,

to bring down her pride in all her splendor

and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.

¹⁰Till your land as they do along the Nile,

Daughter Tarshish,

for you no longer have a harbor.

¹¹The Lord has stretched out his hand over the sea

and made its kingdoms tremble.

He has given an order concerning Phoenicia

that her fortresses be destroyed.

¹²He said, “No more of your reveling,

Virgin Daughter Sidon, now crushed!

“Up, cross over to Cyprus;

even there you will find no rest.”

¹³Look at the land of the Babylonians,

this people that is now of no account!

The Assyrians have made it

a place for desert creatures;

they raised up their siege towers,

they stripped its fortresses bare

and turned it into a ruin.

¹⁴Wail, you ships of Tarshish;

your fortress is destroyed!

¹⁵At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the span of a king’s life. But at the end of these seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute:

¹⁶“Take up a harp, walk through the city,

you forgotten prostitute;

play the harp well, sing many a song,

so that you will be remembered.”

¹⁷At the end of seventy years, the Lord will deal with Tyre. She will return to her lucrative prostitution and will ply her trade with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. ¹⁸Yet her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the Lord; they will not be stored up or hoarded. Her profits will go to those who live before the Lord, for abundant food and fine clothes.