Isaiah 23

⁴Now what do you have against Me, O Tyre, Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering against Me a recompense? If you retaliate against Me, I will swiftly and speedily return your recompense upon your heads.

⁵For you took My silver and gold and carried off My finest treasures to your temples.

⁴And the sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittites, and the Rodanites.

⁹This is what the Lord says: “For three transgressions of Tyre, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they delivered up a whole congregation of exiles to Edom and broke a covenant of brotherhood.

¹⁰So I will send fire upon the walls of Tyre to consume its citadels.”

²²all the kings of Tyre and Sidon; the kings of the coastlands across the sea;

¹⁶against every ship of Tarshish, and against every stately vessel.

⁴For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every remaining ally. Indeed, the Lord is about to destroy the Philistines, the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.

⁵“Sit in silence and go into darkness, O Daughter of the Chaldeans. For you will no longer be called the queen of kingdoms.

⁸The men of Sidon and Arvad were your oarsmen. Your men of skill, O Tyre, were there as your captains.

⁹The elders of Gebal were aboard as shipwrights, repairing your leaks. All the ships of the sea and their sailors came alongside to barter for your merchandise.

²“Son of man, tell the ruler of Tyre that this is what the Lord God says: Your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god; I sit in the seat of gods in the heart of the sea.’ Yet you are a man and not a god, though you have regarded your heart as that of a god.

¹⁰“Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted over the earth.”

¹“Be silent before Me, O islands, and let the peoples renew their strength. Let them come forward and testify; let us together draw near for judgment.

³Tell Tyre, who dwells at the gateway to the sea, merchant of the peoples on many coasts, that this is what the Lord God says: You have said, O Tyre, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’

⁴Your borders are in the heart of the seas; your builders perfected your beauty.

⁵So David assembled all Israel, from the River Shihor in Egypt to Lebo-hamath, to bring the ark of God from Kiriath-jearim.

¹⁸Now what will you gain on your way to Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile? What will you gain on your way to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates?

³Tell Tyre, who dwells at the gateway to the sea, merchant of the peoples on many coasts, that this is what the Lord God says: You have said, O Tyre, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’

⁴Your borders are in the heart of the seas; your builders perfected your beauty.

⁸Who planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns, whose traders are princes, whose merchants are renowned on the earth?

⁵For you took My silver and gold and carried off My finest treasures to your temples.

¹⁰For the land that you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated on foot, like a vegetable garden.

²³The light of a lamp will never shine in you again, and the voices of a bride and bridegroom will never call out in you again. For your merchants were the great ones of the earth, because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery.”

¹⁵And Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites,

³at the sound of the galloping hooves of stallions, the rumbling of chariots, and the clatter of their wheels. The fathers will not turn back for their sons; their hands will hang limp.

⁴For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every remaining ally. Indeed, the Lord is about to destroy the Philistines, the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.

³therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, O Tyre, I am against you, and I will raise up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves.

⁴They will destroy the walls of Tyre and demolish her towers. I will scrape the soil from her and make her a bare rock.

¹¹Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird, with no birth, no pregnancy, and no conception.

¹²Even if they raise their children, I will bereave them of each one. Yes, woe be to them when I turn away from them!

¹⁹and the borders of Canaan extended from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

⁹and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that the fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who dwell in the land are melting in fear of you.

¹⁰For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites across the Jordan, whom you devoted to destruction.

¹⁴The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the dwellers of Philistia.

¹⁵Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; trembling will seize the leaders of Moab; those who dwell in Canaan will melt away,

¹⁹All the nations who know you are appalled over you. You have come to a horrible end and will be no more.’”

²⁹All who handle the oars will abandon their ships. The sailors and all the captains of the sea will stand on the shore.

³⁰They will raise their voices for you and cry out bitterly. They will throw dust on their heads and roll in ashes.

¹⁵This is what the Lord God says to Tyre: ‘Will not the coastlands quake at the sound of your downfall, when the wounded groan at the slaughter in your midst?

¹⁶All the princes of the sea will descend from their thrones, remove their robes, and strip off their embroidered garments. Clothed with terror, they will sit on the ground, trembling every moment, appalled over you.

¹⁷For in a single hour such fabulous wealth has been destroyed!” Every shipmaster, passenger, and sailor, and all who make their living from the sea, will stand at a distance

¹⁸and cry out at the sight of the smoke rising from the fire that consumes her. “What city was ever like this great city?” they will exclaim.

¹²He said, “You shall rejoice no more, O oppressed Virgin Daughter of Sidon. Get up and cross over to Cyprus—even there you will find no rest.”

¹⁵For they flee from the sword—the sword that is drawn—from the bow that is bent, and from the stress of battle.

⁷Therefore let Moab wail; let them wail together for Moab. Moan for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth, you who are utterly stricken.

¹⁰Cultivate your land like the Nile, O Daughter of Tarshish; there is no longer a harbor.

¹This is the burden against Tyre: Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste, without house or harbor. Word has reached them from the land of Cyprus.

²Be silent, O dwellers of the coastland, you merchants of Sidon, whose traders have crossed the sea.

²O city of commotion, O town of revelry? Your slain did not die by the sword, nor were they killed in battle.

²⁹The border then turned back toward Ramah as far as the fortified city of Tyre, turned toward Hosah, and came out at the Sea in the region of Achzib,

⁷I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.

¹“Go down and sit in the dust, O Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, O Daughter of the Chaldeans! For you will no longer be called tender or delicate.

²Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.

¹³and for the land of my people, overgrown with thorns and briers—even for every house of merriment in this city of revelry.

²“Son of man, tell the ruler of Tyre that this is what the Lord God says: Your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god; I sit in the seat of gods in the heart of the sea.’ Yet you are a man and not a god, though you have regarded your heart as that of a god.

³Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you!

⁸“Are not all my commanders kings?” he says.

⁴⁴Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thickets of the Jordan to the watered pasture. For in an instant I will chase Babylon from her land. Who is the chosen one I will appoint for this? For who is like Me, and who can challenge Me? What shepherd can stand against Me?”

⁴⁵Therefore hear the plans that the Lord has drawn up against Babylon and the strategies He has devised against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the little ones of the flock will be dragged away; certainly their pasture will be made desolate because of them.

²⁴So all the nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’

²⁵And the people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.

⁹For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

¹²“Son of man, take up a lament for the king of Tyre and tell him that this is what the Lord God says: ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

¹³You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.

⁶But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

¹¹I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will end the haughtiness of the arrogant and lay low the pride of the ruthless.

¹¹Unleash the fury of your wrath; look on every proud man and bring him low.

¹²Look on every proud man and humble him; trample the wicked where they stand.

¹¹The proud look of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

³⁷Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, for all His works are true and all His ways are just. And He is able to humble those who walk in pride.

¹⁰I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish.’

¹¹I summon a bird of prey from the east, a man for My purpose from a far-off land. Truly I have spoken, and truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, and I will surely do it.

²⁰Immediately Saul fell flat on the ground, terrified by the words of Samuel. And his strength was gone, because he had not eaten anything all that day and night.

¹⁴Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for your harbor has been destroyed!

²¹He pours out contempt on nobles and disarms the mighty.

³²It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way clear.

⁶For at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

⁶All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; they lack the strength to flee in the face of the hunter.

³Tyre has built herself a fortress; she has heaped up silver like dust, and gold like the dirt of the streets.

⁴Behold, the Lord will impoverish her and cast her wealth into the sea, and she will be consumed by fire.

²¹Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind that turned it into dry land. So the waters were divided,

¹⁷Then Jesus began to teach them, and He declared, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

⁷A merchant loves to defraud with dishonest scales in his hands.

⁸And Ephraim boasts: “How rich I have become! I have found wealth for myself. In all my labors, they can find in me no iniquity that is sinful.”

⁸At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up; like a wall the currents stood firm; the depths congealed in the heart of the sea.

⁹The enemy declared, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword; my hand will destroy them.’

¹⁰His multitude of horses will cover you in their dust. When he enters your gates as an army entering a breached city, your walls will shake from the noise of cavalry, wagons, and chariots.

²²And the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will never ring out in you again. Nor will any craftsmen of any trade be found in you again, nor the sound of a millstone be heard in you again.

¹³So I will silence the sound of your songs, and the music of your lyres will no longer be heard.

¹⁴I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread the fishing nets. You will never be rebuilt, for I, the Lord, have spoken, declares the Lord God.’

¹This is the burden against Tyre: Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste, without house or harbor. Word has reached them from the land of Cyprus.

²Be silent, O dwellers of the coastland, you merchants of Sidon, whose traders have crossed the sea.

¹“Go down and sit in the dust, O Virgin Daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground without a throne, O Daughter of the Chaldeans! For you will no longer be called tender or delicate.

⁷Is this your jubilant city, whose origin is from antiquity, whose feet have taken her to settle far away?

⁶⁴Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

⁶⁵Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.

⁶For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans—that ruthless and impetuous nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.

¹⁹And Babylon, the jewel of the kingdoms, the glory of the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.

³⁰the king exclaimed, “Is this not Babylon the Great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”

¹²At that time Merodach-baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard about Hezekiah’s illness.

¹⁸“Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre. Every head was made bald and every shoulder made raw. But he and his army received no wages from Tyre for the labor they expended on it.

⁷But this is not his intention; this is not his plan. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off many nations.

¹This is the burden against Tyre: Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste, without house or harbor. Word has reached them from the land of Cyprus.

²⁵The ships of Tarshish carried your merchandise. And you were filled with heavy cargo in the heart of the sea.

²⁶Your oarsmen have brought you onto the high seas, but the east wind will shatter you in the heart of the sea.

¹⁶against every ship of Tarshish, and against every stately vessel.

⁶Cross over to Tarshish; wail, O inhabitants of the coastland!

¹¹And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because there is no one left to buy their cargo—

¹²cargo of gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls; of fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet; of all kinds of citron wood and every article of ivory, precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble;

²²all the kings of Tyre and Sidon; the kings of the coastlands across the sea;

¹⁵There I will give back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

³Send word to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon through the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah.

⁴Give them a message from the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, to relay to their masters:

²¹The shaggy goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes is the first king.

¹⁰For this is what the Lord says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.

¹⁴And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

¹⁰Then a woman came out to meet him, with the attire of a harlot and cunning of heart.

¹¹She is loud and defiant; her feet do not remain at home.

¹⁴All your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer seek you, for I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins.

⁴because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.

⁶Of oaks from Bashan they made your oars; of wood from the coasts of Cyprus they made your deck, inlaid with ivory.

⁷Of embroidered fine linen from Egypt they made your sail, which served as your banner. Of blue and purple from the coasts of Elishah they made your awning.

²For His judgments are true and just. He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality. He has avenged the blood of His servants that was poured out by her hand.”

²⁶You prostituted yourself with your lustful neighbors, the Egyptians, and increased your promiscuity to provoke Me to anger.

¹⁰For this is what the Lord says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.

⁷All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; all her wages will be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols. Since she collected the wages of a prostitute, they will be used again on a prostitute.

¹⁰May the kings of Tarshish and distant shores bring tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba offer gifts.

¹²When you have finished laying aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you are to give it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat and be filled within your gates.

¹³Then you shall declare in the presence of the Lord your God, “I have removed from my house the sacred portion and have given it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all the commandments You have given me. I have not transgressed or forgotten Your commandments.

¹⁷Not that I am seeking a gift, but I am looking for the fruit that may be credited to your account.

¹⁸I have all I need and more, now that I have received your gifts from Epaphroditus. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.

⁶Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word must share in all good things with his instructor.

¹⁸Instead, you must eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place the Lord your God will choose—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite within your gates. Rejoice before the Lord your God in all you do,

¹⁹and be careful not to neglect the Levites as long as you live in your land.

³⁶You are to make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as on a seal: HOLY TO THE Lord.