23:1-14 Tyre was the mart of the nations. She was noted for mirth and diversions; and this made her loth to consider the warnings God gave by his servants. Her merchants were princes, and lived like princes. Tyre being destroyed and laid waste, the merchants should abandon her. Flee to shift for thine own safety; but those that are uneasy in one place, will be so in another; for when God's judgments pursue sinners, they will overtake them. Whence shall all this trouble come? It is a destruction from the Almighty. God designed to convince men of the vanity and uncertainty of all earthly glory. Let the ruin of Tyre warn all places and persons to take heed of pride; for he who exalts himself shall be abased. God will do it, who has all power in his hand; but the Chaldeans shall be the instruments.

Verse 10. - Pass through thy laud as a river; rather, overflow thy land, as the Nile. Shake off all restraint; that is, give thy desires free vent - be no longer cramped and confined by the restrictions of the metro-polls. Tartessus is addressed, as the leading colony, and perhaps the one most oppressed; and in her person all the colonies are called on to shake themselves free of the mother city. There is no more strength; rather, there is no more a girdle; i.e. there is nothing that need restrain yon - the power of Tyre is gone!

Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish,.... Or, "of the sea", as the Vulgate Latin; meaning Tyre, which was situated in the sea, and did, as it were, spring from it, and was fortified by it, and supported by ships of merchandise on it, from various places; but now, being about to be destroyed, the inhabitants of it are called upon to pass through it, and get out of it as fast as they could, even as swiftly as a river runs, and in great abundance or multitudes. Kimchi thinks the Tyrians are bid to pass to the daughter of Tarshish, that is, to Tarshish itself, to make their escape out of their own land, and flee thither for safety; this the accents will not admit of, there being an "athnach" upon the word "river"; rather the merchants of Tarshish, that were in Tyre, are exhorted to depart to their own land with all possible haste, lest they should be involved in its ruin; though the Targum inclines to the other sense,

"pass out of thy land, as the waters of a river flee to a province of the sea:''

there is no more strength; in Tyre, to defend themselves against the enemy, to protect their trade, and the merchants that traded with them; or, "no more girdle" (e); about it; no more girt about with walls, ramparts, and other fortifications, or with soldiers and shipping, or with the sea, with which it was encompassed, while an island, but now no more, being joined to the continent by the enemy. Some think, because girdles were a part of merchandise, Proverbs 31:24, that this is said to express the meanness and poverty of the place, that there was not so much as a girdle left in it; rather that it was stripped of its power and authority, of which the girdle was a sign; see Isaiah 22:21.

(e) "nulla est zona amplius", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "non est cingulum amplius", Cocceius.

10. a river—Hebrew, "the river," namely, Nile.

daughter of Tarshish—Tyre and its inhabitants (Isa 1:8), about henceforth, owing to the ruin of Tyre, to become inhabitants of its colony, Tartessus: they would pour forth from Tyre, as waters flow on when the barriers are removed [Lowth]. Rather, Tarshish, or Tartessus and its inhabitants, as the phrase usually means: they had been kept in hard bondage, working in silver and lead mines near Tarshish, by the parent city (Eze 26:17): but now "the bond of restraint" (for so "strength," Margin, "girdle," that is, bond, Ps 2:3, ought to be translated) is removed, since Tyre is no more.

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