Holiness to Yahweh

Isaiah 23 ends the first series of oracles against the nations with Tyre, the great Phoenician trading power. Tyre's ships reached Tarshish in the far west, and its colonies spread across the Mediterranean. Isaiah calls it "the market of nations" and "the giver of crowns, whose merchants are princes." King Hiram of Tyre had supplied cedar for Solomon's temple (1 Kings 5).

The chapter asks the key question: "Who has planned this against Tyre?" The answer reveals God's purpose in history: "Yahweh of Armies has planned it, to stain the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth." Economic power, like military power, stands under God's rule. The news would even shake Egypt.

After seventy years, God would restore Tyre's trade, but its profits would be transformed: "Her merchandise and her wages will be holiness to Yahweh. It will not be treasured nor laid up." Instead, its wealth would go "for those who dwell before Yahweh, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing." In the New Testament, Jesus visited the region of Tyre (Mark 7:24-30), and believers lived there (Acts 21:3-4). Revelation 21:24-26 pictures the glory of the nations brought into the holy city.