Isaiah 23:17, commentary and pictures

Isaiah 23 is the burden and judgment upon Tyre, standing alongside judgments upon Damascus, Egypt, Philistia and other nations and peoples as the way leading forward to judgment upon the whole earth. It foretells Tyre's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, distinct from the later destruction by Alexander when Tyre's stones and timber and dust were thrown into the sea to make a bridge to New Tyre. Tyre would be forgotten seventy years and counted as a city of no importance during that period, measured according to the days of one king or kingdom. That seventy-year period was equal to the age of the Chaldean king who destroyed it and was connected with Babylonian rule.

After the end of the seventy years the Lord would visit Tyre by restoring it. The timing is linked to the fall of the Babylonian Empire, whose end gave Tyre an opportunity to rebuild. Restored Tyre would turn to her hire by resuming its commerce and dealings with the kingdoms of the world, pictured as committing fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. The restoration did not mean Tyre's character had changed, for the renewed city rivaled the old in splendor and luxury but returned to its former wickedness, using its wealth and influence corruptly. That second Tyre was later overthrown in subsequent destruction by Alexander the Great, as part of the account of Tyre's later restoration and subsequent destruction.

The harlotry is spiritual, not physical, and Tyre's engaging with the kingdoms of the world like a harlot makes it a type of the apostate church. The Lord visiting Tyre after its desolation means God does a work for her, fulfilled when a Christian church is raised up in the city of Tyre in which believers give their means and the wealth of Tyre to God, though the city itself does not escape the punishment due her. The word translated world comes from the Hebrew erets, meaning earth or land and by extension the people who inhabit it, used there in the sense of world. The verse therefore supports reading erets in Isaiah 13:9 as the earth rather than only the land of Israel.