Isaiah 23:13

Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(13) Behold, the land of the Chaldeans.—Heb., land of Kasdim. The prophet points to the destruction of one power that had resisted Assyria as an example of what Tyre might expect. The Assyrian inscriptions record the conquests referred to. Sargon relates his victory over the “perverse and rebellious Chaldæans,” who had rebelled under Merôdach-baladan (Records of the Past, vii. 41, 45). Towns were pillaged, 80,570 men carried away captive from a single city. Sennacherib (ibid., p. 59) boasts of having plundered Babylon itself, and all the “strong cities and castles of the land of the Chaldæans”; and again, of having crushed another revolt under Suzab the Babylonian (ibid., i. 47-49). The words that follow on this survey are better rendered: This people is no more: Asshur appointeth it for the desert beasts. They set up their towers, they destroy its palaces. The “towers are those of the Assyrian besiegers attacking Babylon; the palaces, those of the attacked. The words have, however, often been interpreted as pointing to the origin and migration of the Chaldæans, as having had scarcely any national existence till Assyria had brought them into the plains of the Euphrates. The English version seems based upon this interpretation of the passage. It is obvious, however, that such a fragment of ethnological history does not cohere well with the context, and gives a less satisfactory meaning. It is doubtful, too, whether the supposed history itself rests on any adequate evidence.

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 23:13. Behold the land of the Chaldeans, &c. — This verse, in which there is much obscurity, will admit of different interpretations. One adopted by Dr. Lightfoot and some others, is to this purpose. Behold, how easily the land of the Chaldeans was destroyed by the Assyrians, though their own hands founded it, set up the tower of Babylon, and raised up its palaces; yet he, the Assyrian, brought it to ruin: the king of Assyria having lately taken Babylon, and made it tributary to the Assyrian empire. Another and more probable interpretation is thus stated by Poole, and adopted by Lowth: “You Tyrians, who think your city impregnable, cast your eyes upon the land and empire of the Chaldeans, or Babylonians; which though now it be a flourishing kingdom, and shall shortly become more glorious and potent, yet shall certainly be brought to utter ruin: and therefore your presumption is unreasonable and vain.” The last clause especially, in the original, שׂמה למפלה, he hath placed, or appointed, it for ruin, seems evidently to favour this interpretation. Bishop Newton, however, (with whom Bishop Lowth, Dr. Waterland, and many others agree,) understands the prophet as speaking in this clause, not of the ruin of Babylon, but of Tyre. He therefore interprets the verse thus: “Behold — An exclamation, that he is going to utter something new and extraordinary; the land of the Chaldeans — That is, Babylon, and the country about Babylon; this people was not — Was of no note or eminence; till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness — They dwelt before in tents, and led a wandering life in the wilderness, till the Assyrians built Babylon for their reception. They set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof — Herodotus, Ctesias, and other ancient historians agree, that the kings of Assyria fortified and beautified Babylon; and he — That is, this people,” (as Bishop Lowth renders it,) “mentioned before, the Chaldeans or Babylonians, brought it to ruin — That is, Tyre, which is the subject of the whole prophecy. The Assyrians were at that time the great monarchs of the East; the Chaldeans were their slaves and subjects; and therefore it is the more extraordinary that the prophet should, so many years beforehand, foresee the successes and conquests of the Chaldeans.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Behold the land of the Chaldeans - This is a very important verse, as it expresses the source from where these calamities were coming upon Tyre; and as it states some historical facts of great interest respecting the rise of Babylon. In the previous verses the prophet had foretold the certain destruction of Tyre, and had said that whoever was the agent, it was to be traced to the overruling providence of God. He here states distinctly that the agent in accomplishing all this would be the Chaldeans - a statement which fixes the time to the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, and proves that it does not refer to the conquest by Alexander the Great. A part of this verse should be read as a parenthesis, and its general sense has been well expressed by Lowth, who has followed Vitringa:

'Behold the land of the Chaldeans;

This people was of no account;

(The Assyrian founded it for the inhabitants of the desert;

They raised the watch towers, they set up the palaces thereof;)

This people hath reduced her to a ruin.'

Behold - Indicating that what he was about to say was something unusual, remarkable, and not to be expected in the ordinary course of events. That which was so remarkable was the fact that a people formerly so little known, would rise to such power as to be able to overturn the ancient and mighty city of Tyre.

The land of the Chaldeans - Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Chaldea or Babylonia. The names Babylon and Chaldea are often interchanged as denoting the same kingdom and people (see Isaiah 48:14, Isaiah 48:20; Jeremiah 50:1; Jeremiah 51:24; Ezekiel 12:13). The sense is, 'Lo! the power of Chaldea shall be employed in your overthrow.'

This people - The people of Babylonia or Chaldea.

Was not - Was not known; had no government or power; was a rude, nomadic, barbarous, feeble, and illiterate people. The same phrase occurs in Deuteronomy 32:21, where it also means a people unknown, rude, barbarous, wandering. That this was formerly the character of the Chaldeans is apparent from Job 1:17, where they are described as a nomadic race, having no established place of abode, and living by plunder.

Till the Assyrian - Babylon was probably founded by Nimrod (see the notes at Isaiah 13), but it was long before it rose to splendor. Belus or Bel, the Assyrian, is said to have reigned at Babylon A.M. 2682, or 1322 b.c., in the time of Shamgar, judge of Israel. He was succeeded by Ninus and Semiramis, who gave the principal celebrity and splendor to the city and kingdom, and who may be said to have been its founders. They are probably referred to here.

Founded it - Semiramis reclaimed it from the waste of waters; built dikes to confine the Euphrates in the proper channel; and made it the capital of the kingdom. This is the account given by Herodotus (Hist. i.): 'She (Semiramis) built mounds worthy of admiration, where before the river was accustomed to spread like a sea through the whole plain.'

For them that dwell in the wilderness - Hebrew, לציים letsiyiym - 'For the tsiim.' This word (from צי tsiy or ציה tsiyah, a waste or desert) denotes properly the inhabitants of the desert or waste places, and is applied to people in Psalm 72:9; Psalm 74:14; and to animals in Isaiah 13:21 (notes); Isaiah 34:14. Here it denotes, I suppose, those who had been formerly inhabitants of the deserts around Babylon - the wandering, rude, uncultivated, and predatory people, such as the Chaldeans were Job 1:17; and means that the Assyrian who founded Babylon collected this rude and predatory people, and made use of them in building the city. The same account Arrian gives respecting Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, who says, that 'Philip found them wandering and unsettled (πλανήτας καὶ ἀπόρους planētas kai aporous), feeding small flocks of sheep upon the mountains, that he gave them coats of mail instead of their shepherd's dress, and led them from the mountain to the plain, and gave them cities to dwell in, and established them with good and wholesome laws.' (Hist. Alex vii.)

They set up the towers thereof - That is, the towers in Babylon, not in Tyre (see the notes at Isaiah 13) Herodotus expressly says that the Assyrians built the towers and temples of Babylon (i.continued...

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

13. Behold—Calling attention to the fact, so humiliating to Tyre, that a people of yesterday, like the Chaldees, should destroy the most ancient of cities, Tyre.

was not—had no existence as a recognized nation; the Chaldees were previously but a rude, predatory people (Job 1:17).

Assyrian founded it—The Chaldees ("them that dwell in the wilderness") lived a nomadic life in the mountains of Armenia originally (Arphaxad, in Ge 10:22, refers to such a region of Assyria near Armenia), north and east of Assyria proper. Some may have settled in Mesopotamia and Babylonia very early and given origin to the astrologers called Chaldees in later times. But most of the people had been transferred only a little before the time of this prophecy from their original seats in the north to Mesopotamia, and soon afterwards to South Babylonia. "Founded it," means "assigned it (the land) to them who had (heretofore) dwelt in the wilderness" as a permanent settlement (so in Ps 104:8) [Maurer]. It was the Assyrian policy to infuse into their own population of the plain the fresh blood of hardy mountaineers, for the sake of recruiting their armies. Ultimately the Chaldees, by their powerful priest-caste, gained the supremacy and established the later or Chaldean empire. Horsley refers it to Tyre, founded by an Assyrian race.

towers thereof—namely, of Babylon, whose towers, Herodotus says, were "set up" by the Assyrians [Barnes]. Rather, "The Chaldees set up their siege-towers" against Tyre, made for the attack of high walls, from which the besiegers hurled missiles, as depicted in the Assyrian sculptures [G. V. Smith].

raised up—rather, "They lay bare," namely, the foundations of "her (Tyre's) palaces," that is, utterly overthrew them (Ps 137:7).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Behold the land of the Chaldeans; you Tyrians, who think your city impregnable, cast your eyes upon the land and empire of the Chaldeans, or Babylonians; which though now it be a flourishing kingdom, and shall shortly grow far more glorious and potent, even the glory of kingdoms, as it is called, Isaiah 13:19, yet. shall certainly be brought to utter ruin; and therefore your presumption is most vain and unreasonable.

This people was not: the Chaldeans at first were not a people, not formed into any commonwealth or kingdom.

Till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness; till Nimrod, the head and founder of the Assyrian monarchy, built Babel, Genesis 10:10, now the head of the Chaldean monarchy, which he built for those people, who then lived in tents, and were dispersed here and there in wild and waste places, that he might bring them into order, and under government, and thereby establish and promote his own empire.

They set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; the Chaldeans being by this means brought together into a body, fell to the work of building their city, and its towers and palaces, and thereby got power and dominion over their neighbours, till at last they grew the greatest of all the monarchies that then were upon earth.

He; the Lord, who is expressed before, and is frequently designed in Scripture by this indefinite pronoun he, as hath been many times observed; whereby he insinuates the true reason why neither the Chaldeans nor the Tyrians should be able to stand, because the Almighty God was engaged against them. Brought it to ruin; will infallibly bring that great empire to ruin. He speaks of a future thing as if it were already past, as the prophets use to do. The Chaldeans shall now return to their first nothing, and become no people again.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Behold the land of the Chaldeans,.... Not Tyre, as some think, so called, because founded by the Chaldeans, who finding it a proper place for "ships", so they render the word "tziim", afterward used, and which is so interpreted by Jarchi, built the city of Tyre; but the country called Chaldea is here meant, and the Babylonish empire and monarchy, particularly Babylon, the head of it:

this people was not; a people, or of any great note and figure:

till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness; Nimrod was the first builder of Babel, in the land of Shinar, and from that land went forth Ashur, and built Nineveh, the city Rehoboth, and Calah, which were built for people that lived scattered up and down in fields and desert places; so that the Assyrians were the first founders of Chaldea; and after it had been inhabited by the Chaldeans, it was seized upon by the Assyrians, and became a province of theirs:

they set up the towers thereof; the towers of Babylon, not of Tyre. Jarchi interprets it of building bulwarks against Tyre:

they raised up the palaces thereof; the stately buildings of Babylon; or razed them; so Jarchi; also the Targum,

"they destroyed the palaces thereof:''

and he brought it to ruin: or he will do it; the past tense for the future, i.e. God will bring Babylon to ruin; and therefore it need not seem strange that Tyre should be destroyed, since this would be the case of Babylon. Sir John Marsham (g) interprets the words thus,

"look upon Babylon, the famous metropolis of the Chaldeans; the people, that possess that city, not along ago dwelt in deserts, having no certain habitation; Nabonassar the Assyrian brought men thither, the Scenites (the inhabitants of Arabia Deserta, so called from their dwelling in tents); he fortified the city, he raised up towers, and built palaces; such now was this city, founded by the Assyrian; yet God hath brought it to ruin; Babylon shall be destroyed as Tyre;''

and this instance is brought to show that a city and a people, more ancient and powerful than Tyre, either had been or would be destroyed; and therefore need not call in question the truth or credibility of the prophecy relating to Tyre; but the sense of the whole, according to Vitringa, seems rather to be this: "behold the land of the Chaldeans"; the country they now inhabit; take notice of what is now about to be said; it may seem strange and marvellous: "this people was not"; not that they were of a late original, for they were an ancient people, who descended from Chesed, the son of Nahor, but for a long time of no account, that lived scattered up and down in desert places: till "the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness"; he drove out the Arabians from Mesopotamia, and translated the Chaldeans thither, who before inhabited the wilderness: "they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces"; that is, the Assyrians fortified and adorned the city of Babylon, the metropolis of the country; so Herodotus (h) says the Assyrian kings adorned the walls and temples of Babylon; now behold this land of the Chaldeans, or the people that inhabit it, as poor and as low as they have been, who owe their all to the Assyrians, even these "shall bring" Tyre "to ruin"; so that the instruments of the ruin of Tyre are here described; which, when this prophecy was delivered, might seem improbable, the Assyrians being possessors of monarchy.

(g) Canon. Chronic. Egypt, &c. p. 509. Ed. 4to. (h) Clio, sive l. 1. c. 184.

Geneva Study Bible

Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the {q} Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up its towers, they raised up its palaces; and he {r} brought it to ruin.

(q) The Chaldeans who dwelt in tents in the wilderness were gathered by the Assyrians into cities.

(r) The people of the Chaldeans destroyed the Assyrians: by which the prophet means that seeing the Chaldaeans were able to overcome the Assyrians who were so great a nation, much more will these two nations of Chaldea and Assyria be able to overthrow Tyrus.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

13. Every attempt to extract a meaning from the verse as it stands is beset by insuperable difficulties. Perhaps the best suggestion is that the fate of Chaldæa is mentioned as a warning example to Tyre: “Behold the land of the Chaldæans; this people is no more; the Assyrian hath appointed it for the beasts of the wilderness, &c.” (so R.V.). This is a fairly good sense; only, “this people is no more” is hardly a possible rendering of the Hebrew. The reference is supposed to be to one (probably the last) of Sennacherib’s three conquests of Babylonia, which were certainly carried out with a thoroughness which would justify the terms of the prophecy. But is there any evidence that Babylonia was known as the “land of the Chaldæans” before the rise of the Chaldæan Empire? There is none in the Bible.—The text is certainly in disorder, and there is little hope of recovering the original reading. Ewald’s attractive emendation of “Canaanites” for “Chaldæans” fails to meet the case, for the exclamation “Behold the land of the Canaanites” surely comes too late after so much has been said of the ruin of this very land. The most acute analysis of the verse is that of Duhm, although, as is usual with this commentator, it involves an extensive manipulation of the text. To the original prophecy he assigns only the first and last clauses, and for “Chaldæans” he substitutes “Chittim”: Behold the land of Chittim, he (Jehovah) hath made it a ruin”—a continuation of the thought of the preceding verse. The intermediate clauses are regarded as an interpolation and are ingeniously explained as follows: “this is the people that was founded by the sea-farers (cf. Numbers 24:24), they erected its watch-towers, its cities and its palaces.” It seems a pity that so good a sentence should be denied to the prophet.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 13. - Behold the land of the Chaldeans (comp. Isaiah 13:19; Isaiah 47:1, 5; Isaiah 48:14, 20). Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah knows the people as Chahleans (Kasdim), the capital as Babylon. Kaldi, in the inscriptions, is a rare word, and the name of a not very important tribe. Yet Berosus uses the term to designate the whole nation. This people was not; rather, is not; i.e. "is no more a people" - "has ceased to exist." Sargon conquered Babylon in B.C. 710, and made himself king, ruling it, together with Assyria, until B.C. 705, when it rebelled and recovered its independence. Sennacherib reconquered it in B.C. 704, and again in B.C. 700, when he made his eldest son viceroy. Esarhaddon ruled over both countries, as did Asshur-bani-pal. Though later (about B.C. 620-610) Babylon reasserted her independence, and became a great empire, yet Isaiah was justified, at almost any period of his life after B.C. 710, in speaking of her as non-existent. Till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness. There is no "till" in the original. The clause is separate and independent, not connected grammatically with the preceding. Nor does it assert that the Assyrians "founded" Babylon for any one, but only that they "established" it, or "appointed" it to be a habitation for "the beasts of the desert" (comp. Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:14; Jeremiah 1:39, etc.). The prophet views the Assyrians as intending to reduce Babylon to ruins, and leave it waste and uninhabited. The towers thereof; i.e. the siege-towers requisite for reducing so strong a city. They raised up; rather, they made bare (cf. Habakkuk 3:9). He brought it to ruin. "He" is "the Assyrian." The case of Babylon is adduced to increase the alarm of Tyro, by reminding the inhabitants of what the Assyrians had done to a town greater and stronger than their own. The allusion is probably to certain severities of Sargon's in B.C. 710, which, however, are rhetorically exaggerated. It was never the policy of the Assyrians to depopulate or destroy Babylon. Isaiah 23:13

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The prophet now proceeds to describe the fate of Phoenicia. "Behold the Chaldean land: this people that has not been (Asshur - it hath prepared the same for desert beasts) - they set up their siege-towers, destroy the palaces of Kena'an, make it a heap of ruins. Mourn, he ships of Tarshish: for your fortress is laid waste." The general meaning of Isaiah 23:13, as the text now runs, is that the Chaldeans have destroyed Kenaēan, and in fact Tyre. הקימוּ (they set up) points to the plural idea of "this people," and בּחוּניו (chethib בּחיניו) to the singular idea of the same; on the other hand, the feminine suffixes relate to Tyre. "They (the Chaldeans) have laid bare the palaces ('armenoth, from 'armoneth) of Tyre," i.e., have thrown them down, or burned them down to their very foundations (עורר, from ערר equals ערה, Psalm 137:7, like ערער in Jeremiah 51:58); it (the Chaldean people) has made her (Tyre) a heap of rubbish. So far the text is clear, and there is no ground for hesitation. But the question arises, whether in the words לציּים יסדהּ אשּׁוּר Asshur is the subject or the object. In the former case the prophet points to the land of the Chaldeans, for the purpose of describing the instruments of divine wrath; and having called them "a nation which has not been" (היה לא), explains this by saying that Asshur first founded the land which the Chaldeans now inhabit for them, i.e., wild hordes (Psalm 72:9); or better still (as tziyyim can hardly signify mountain hordes), that Asshur has made it (this nation, עם fem., as in Jeremiah 8:5; Exodus 5:16) into dwellers in steppes (Knobel), which could not be conceived of in any other way than that Asshur settled the Chaldeans, who inhabited the northern mountains, in the present so-called land of Chaldea, and thus made the Chaldeans into a people, i.e., a settled, cultivated people, and a people bent on conquest and taking part in the history of the world (according to Knobel, primarily as a component part of the Assyrian army). But this view, which we meet with even in Calvin, is exposed to a grave difficulty. It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the Chaldeans, who were descendants of Nahor, according to Genesis 22:22, and therefore of Semitic descent,

(Note: Arpachshad (Genesis 10:22), probably the ancestor of the oldest Chaldeans, was also Semitic, whether his name is equivalent to Armachshad (the Chaldean high-land) or not. Arrapachitis rings like Albagh, the name of the table-land between the lake of Urmia and that of Van, according to which shad was the common Armenian termination for names of places.)

came down from the mountains which bound Armenia, Media, and Assyria, having been forced out by the primitive migration of the Arians from west to east; although the more modern hypothesis, which represents them as a people of Tatar descent, and as mixing among the Shemites of the countries of the Euphrates and Tigris, has no historical support whatever, the very reverse being the case, according to Genesis 10, since Babylon was of non-Semitic or Cushite origin, and therefore the land of Chaldea, as only a portion of Babylonia (Strabo, xvi. 1, 6), was the land of the Shemites. But the idea that the Assyrians brought them down from the mountains into the lowlands, though not under Ninus and Semiramis,

(Note: The same view is held by Oppert, though he regards the Casdim as the primitive Turanian (Tatar) inhabitants of Shinar, and supposes this passage to relate to their subjugation by the Semitic Assyrians.)

as Vitringa supposes, but about the time of Shalmanassar (Ges., Hitzig, Knobel, and others),

(Note: For an impartial examination of this migration or transplantation hypothesis, which is intimately connected with the Scythian hypothesis, see M. V. Niebuhr's Geschichte Assurs und Babels seit Phul (1857, pp. 152-154). Rawlinson (Monarchies, i.-71-74) decidedly rejects the latter as at variance with the testimonies of Scripture, of Berosus, and of the monuments.)

is pure imagination, and merely an inference drawn from this passage. For this reason I have tried to give a different interpretation to the clause לציּים יסדהּ אשּׁוּר in my Com. on Habakkuk (p. 22), viz., "Asshur - it has assigned the same to the beasts of the desert." That Asshur may be used not only pre-eminently, but directly, for Nineveh (like Kena‛an for Tzor), admits of no dispute, since even at the present day the ruins are called Arab. 'l-âṯūr, and this is probably a name applied to Nineveh in the arrow-headed writings also (Layard, Nineveh and its Remains).

The word tziyyim is commonly applied to beasts of the wilderness (e.g., Isaiah 13:21), and לציּים יסד for ציּה שׂם (used of Nineveh in Zephaniah 2:13-14) may be explained in accordance with Psalm 104:8. The form of the parenthetical clause, however, would be like that of the concluding clause of Amos 1:11. But what makes me distrustful even of this view is not a doctrinal ground (Winer, Real Wrterbuch, i. 218), but one taken from Isaiah's own prophecy. Isaiah undoubtedly sees a Chaldean empire behind the Assyrian; but this would be the only passage in which he prophesied (and that quite by the way) how the imperial power would pass from the latter to the former. It was the task of Nahum and Zephaniah to draw this connecting line. It is true that this argument is not sufficient to outweigh the objections that can be brought against the other view, which makes the text declare a fact that is never mentioned anywhere else; but it is important nevertheless. For this reason it is possible, indeed, that Ewald's conjecture is a right one, and that the original reading of the text was כּנענים ארץ הן. Read in this manner, the first clause runs thus: "Behold the land of the Canaaneans: this people has come to nothing; Asshur has prepared it (their land) for the beasts of the desert." It is true that היה לא generally means not to exist, or not to have been (Obadiah 1:16); but there are also cases in which לא is used as a kind of substantive (cf., Jeremiah 33:25), and the words mean to become or to have become nothing (Job 6:21; Ezekiel 21:32, and possibly also Isaiah 15:6). Such an alteration of the text is not favoured, indeed, by any of the ancient versions. For our own part, we still abide by the explanation we have given in the Commentary on Habakkuk, not so much for this reason, as because the seventy years mentioned afterwards are a decisive proof that the prophet had the Chaldeans and not Asshur in view, as the instruments employed in executing the judgment upon Tyre. The prophet points out the Chaldeans - that nation which (although of primeval antiquity, Jeremiah 5:15) had not yet shown itself as a conqueror of the world (cf., Habakkuk 1:6), having been hitherto subject to the Assyrians; but which had now gained the mastery after having first of all destroyed Asshur, i.e., Nineveh

(Note: This destruction of Nineveh was really such an one as could be called yesor l'ziyyim (a preparation for beasts of the desert), for it has been ever since a heap of ruins, which the earth gradually swallowed up; so that when Xenophon went past it, he was not even told that these were the ruins of the ancient Ninus. On the later buildings erected upon the ruins, see Marcus v. Niebuhr, p. 203.)

(namely, with the Medo-Babylonian army under Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian empire, in 606 b.c.) - as the destroyers of the palaces of Tyre. With the appeal to the ships of Tarshish to pour out their lamentation, the prophecy returns in Isaiah 23:14 to the opening words in Isaiah 23:1. According to Isaiah 23:4, the fortress here is insular Tyre. As the prophecy thus closes itself by completing the circle, Isaiah 23:15-18 might appear to be a later addition. This is no more the case, however, here, than in the last part of chapter 19. Those critics, indeed, who do not acknowledge any special prophecies that are not vaticinia post eventum, are obliged to assign Isaiah 23:15-18 to the Persian era.