Tyre

Tyre (Hebrew Tsor, "rock"; Greek Tyros) was the chief city of ancient Phoenicia, a maritime power on the eastern Mediterranean coast some twenty miles south of Sidon. Built partly on the mainland and partly on a fortified rocky island offshore, it became one of the greatest commercial empires of the ancient world, planting colonies across the Mediterranean — including Carthage — and growing fabulously wealthy from trade. In Scripture Tyre is at once Israel's commercial partner and a byword for the pride and luxury of the trading nations under God's judgment.

Tyre's friendliest hour came under King Hiram I, who loved David and gave wholehearted aid to Solomon: he supplied cedar and cypress timber from Lebanon and skilled craftsmen for building the temple, in exchange for grain and oil (1 Kings 5:1–12; 2 Chronicles 2:3–16), and joined Solomon in seafaring ventures from Ezion-geber (1 Kings 9:26–28). This alliance turned darker when Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, gave his daughter Jezebel in marriage to Ahab, bringing the worship of Baal-Melqart into Israel (1 Kings 16:31).

The prophets devote some of their fullest oracles to Tyre, indicting its pride, greed, and slave-trading. Ezekiel laments the city as a magnificent merchant ship, perfect in beauty, that would sink in the heart of the seas (Ezekiel 27:3–4), and addresses its prince, whose heart was lifted up as though he were a god (Ezekiel 28:2) — a passage long read as reaching behind the human ruler to a deeper pride. Isaiah foretold its humbling (Isaiah 23:1), and Amos and Joel condemned its trafficking of captives (Amos 1:9–10; Joel 3:4–8). Ezekiel announced that many nations would come against her and scrape her bare "like the top of a rock," a place for the spreading of nets (Ezekiel 26:4–5). These judgments were carried out in stages — Nebuchadnezzar's thirteen-year siege, and finally Alexander the Great, who in 332 BC built a causeway out to the island and destroyed the city.

In the New Testament Tyre still stands. Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon, where He healed the daughter of a persistent Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24–30), and He declared that pagan Tyre and Sidon would have repented in sackcloth had they seen the mighty works done in the unbelieving towns of Galilee — so that their judgment would be more bearable than Israel's (Matthew 11:21–22). Later a community of disciples lived there; Paul knelt with them on the shore to pray as he journeyed to Jerusalem (Acts 21:3–5). Tyre thus stands in Scripture as both a partner in building God's house and a lasting emblem of worldly splendor that pride brings low.