Isaiah 23: Howl, Ye Ships of Tarshish

"The 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. Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue" (23:1–3).

"Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? The Lord of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory" (vv. 8–9).

"And 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. Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten… And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord: it shall not be treasured nor laid up" (vv. 15–18).

Tyre's history

Tyre, an island city off the Lebanese coast, dominated Mediterranean trade from the 10th to the 6th century BC. Its king Luli (Elulaios) fled to Cyprus when Sennacherib advanced in 701 BC (Sennacherib's annals; the Assyrian king says this of Luli "king of Sidon"). Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years (Josephus, Against Apion 1.156, citing Phoenician records; compare Ezekiel 29:18, which says Nebuchadnezzar got no wages from it). Alexander the Great took it in 332 BC by building a causeway. The oracle's details cannot be tied to one of these events with certainty.

Seventy years

"Seventy years, according to the days of one king" can mean a normal life span (Psalm 90:10) or a conventional period of divine anger. Jeremiah gives seventy years for Babylon's rule (25:11–12; 29:10). An inscription of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BC) says that Marduk had decreed seventy years of desolation for Babylon but in mercy turned the number around to eleven (in cuneiform, 70 written upside down reads 11). Seventy years was a known formula for a god's anger against a city. The library's Greek reads "seventy years, the time a man lives, the time a king lives."

A missing sentence in the Great Isaiah Scroll

In 23:15 the Great Isaiah Scroll reads only "And it shall come to pass in that day [that] Tyre [will be] like the song of the prostitute," without "Tyre will be forgotten seventy years, like the days of one king; at the end of seventy years." The seventy years do appear in 23:17. The Cave 4 copy 4Q57 (partly restored) has the longer text. The shorter text may be a copying error in 1QIsa-a (the scribe's eye skipping between similar words); that stays a possibility, not a conclusion, until the photographs and the critical edition are checked. See the passage page.

Revelation and the merchants

Revelation 17–18 describes Babylon the great as a prostitute with whom "the kings of the earth have committed fornication" (17:2; 18:3; compare 23:17) and has merchants and ship captains lament her fall (18:9–19), drawing on Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 26–28. It is a literary reuse, not a quotation.