Isaiah 23:4
Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins. Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins.
Isaiah 23:4 belongs to the first division of Isaiah, chapters 1 through 39, made up of single prophecies and historical accounts from the time of Isaiah's active public work as messenger to the rulers and the people, each published at different times and on different occasions and afterward gathered into one collection while remaining distinct and single. It does not belong to the second division, chapters 40 through 66, written in his later years apart from active exertions in the theocracy and occupied wholly with the future, consoling with deliverance from the predicted Babylonian captivity under the monarch whom Jehovah will send and with deliverance from sin and error through the Messiah and the glory of God's spiritual kingdom and its exalted Founder. Within that first division it stands in a series of prophecies against nations, including Babylon, Philistia, and Moab. Specifically, it is one of the prophecies concerning Tyre.
The sea, even the strength of the sea, speaks to shame Zidon by declaring that it does not travail, bring forth children, nourish young men, or bring up virgins. This means it did not give birth to or nurture the young men and virgins of Sidon. That declaration is part of the predicted ruin and desolation of the Phoenician cities. The wider passage of chapter 23 verses 1 through 18 foretells Tyre's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, which is distinct from the later conquest by Alexander, when Tyre's stones, timber, and dust were thrown into the sea to build a causeway to New Tyre.