Commentaria in Isaiam
“Be ashamed, Sidon, says the sea: and if thou seek the cause, hear why: for a slight prebend a long road is run, and for eternal life scarcely by many is the foot once lifted from the earth.”
I have not been in labour.—St. Jerome thinks these are the words of Sidon, bewailing her disaster, that she is bereaved by the enemy of her youths and virgins.
But others commonly judge better that they are the words of Tyre. Hence, first, Pintus and Forerius take this as a question, not meaning is it not: have I not been in labour and borne most valiant youths, who would fight for me most bravely? as if to say: I bore them, but in vain; for they could not resist so strong an enemy, but fell together with me.
Secondly, Emmanuel Sa explains thus: “I have not been in labour,” etc., that is, would that I had never been in labour with them, namely with sons, who could save neither me nor themselves!
Thirdly, Sanchez understands by the youths and virgins the daughters, that is, the colonies of Tyre, such as were Carthage, Utica, Gades and Tartessus, cities of Spain, which sent aid to Tyre against the Chaldeans, and therefore she held out against them to the fourth year, says Megasthenes in Josephus, Antiquities, book 10, chapter 11; but his credit is uncertain. The sense therefore is: Be ashamed, Sidon, for neither thou, who wast the mother of Tyre, nor thy grandsons and granddaughters, namely the cities that were the daughters and colonies of Tyre, brought help to their mother, namely Tyre, and freed her from the enemy; and so it was to Tyre as if she had borne no sons and daughters.
Fourthly and most simply, as if to say: I am so destitute of citizens, sons and daughters, they having been captured or slain by the enemy, as if I had never borne or nourished them.
5. When it shall be heard in Egypt, they shall be sorrowful.—Both because the Egyptians had great commerce with Tyre; they will grieve therefore at her destruction, because their gain will perish; and because they will fear lest after Tyre the Chaldean invade Egypt, as in fact happened: for God gave to the Chaldeans, as to his ministers, for the long and troublesome siege of Tyre, as wages, Egypt and its spoils, as is plain from Ezechiel 29:19; and from his prophecy, as also from this of Isaias, and the like of Jeremias, chapter 47, verse 4, the Egyptians could know it, and therefore they grieved.
6. Pass over the seas, etc., ye inhabitants of the island,—in Tyre. The address is to the Tyrian merchants, that on the destruction impending they should seek other abodes and other markets. That the Tyrians did so, and took ship to Carthage and to other islands, St. Jerome here teaches from ancient histories.
7. Is not this your (city Tyre) that gloried in her antiquity?—as a most ancient city that was to last for ever. Tyre was older than Rome and Carthage: for Carthage was a colony of Tyre, in which Dido received Aeneas in hospitality, from whom the Latins and Romans descend. Josephus, Antiquities, book 8, chapter 3, asserts that Tyre was founded 240 years before the temple of Solomon. Berosus makes Tyre far older, for he relates that it was founded by Tyras a little after the flood, as I said at the beginning of the chapter. Carpentier elegantly rendered this verse in verse:
Tyre was that city, founded in the ancient age, and tracing back countless suns to her own Agenor, in her folly she presumed in hope on eternal honours.
Her feet shall carry her afar,—as if to say: The Tyrians shall be led away captive, and shall go on foot to Babylon.
8. Upon Tyre, formerly crowned.—Just as the king stands out by the royal crown, so Tyre with gold, gems, purple, wealth and all merchandise stood out above other cities like a queen, says St. Jerome; for the crown is a symbol not only of kingdom but also of abundance of things.
Secondly, because Tyre was placed on a rock and crag; hence it is called in Hebrew sor, that is, rock, says Masius on Josue 19; wherefore the walls and towers of Tyre, girding the head of its mount and rock, bore the image of a mural crown.
Thirdly, because she stood out amid the waves as lady and queen of the sea.
Fourthly, the Hebrew maatira signifies not only crowned but properly crowning; Tyre is called crowning, because she enriched so many that she seemed to make them kings or petty kings.
Hence he adds: “Whose merchants were princes.” So today the Venetian merchants think themselves above princes in dignity, kings excepted. Nay, at Antwerp we have seen merchants so powerful that they made expenditures which princes could not have sustained; so that one of their citizens was called Regulus, a little king.
Fifthly, the Arabic of Antioch renders: who has thought that Tyre, a kingdom disturbed (moved) by its inhabitants, would come to this loss, or calumny? And the Arabic of Alexandria: who is it that gave this counsel against Tyre, well tilled and built?
The glorious ones of the earth,—of Tyre, namely: for he speaks of her. For the Tyrians were powerful, and as it were lords of sea and land. See St. Jerome, and what I said at the beginning of the chapter.
10. Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of the sea, —as if to say: O Tyre, once thou wast the daughter of the sea, and as it were a vast sea (as I said at verse 4), both of waters and of wealth and peoples; now thou art made a river, yeor, that is, a tiny rivulet, which gradually flows down to sloping places and diminishes until it fails and is absorbed by the earth: so thou also shalt fall from thy splendour and glory; and thou shalt pass through thy land, as if going to Babylon, and there be scattered, mingled and absorbed by other nations.
Otherwise St. Jerome: “As a river or rivulet,” he says, “is easily crossed on foot, so thou, led into captivity, shalt pass through thy land.”
Otherwise Vatablus also, as if to say: Pass over and flee, O Tyre, flow away like a river, before the enemy seize thee.
Daughter of the sea.—Because Tyre was a dweller by the sea, so that she seemed to be born, brought up and cherished by the sea as by a mother, like a daughter. So Athenaeus called the island Delos the daughter of the sea, because it suddenly emerged from the sea. In like manner Venice might be called the daughter of the sea: whence a poet elegantly plays on them thus:
Either Venus made from the Venetians a lovely name for herself, or the Venetians have the name and omen of Venus.
Venus is said to have risen from the foam of the sea; and if you see the city of the Venetians, it is believed to have risen from the sea.
Jupiter is her father, but Mars is the father of this one: she is the wife of Vulcan, but this one is the spouse of the sea.
By a like riddle, in an adage, ice is called the daughter of the sea and of water. Whence that saying:
My mother bore me, and the same is soon born of me.
For ice is resolved into the water from which it was born. Again, the “daughter of the sea” is salt, of which is that riddle:
Daughter of the sea, or the sea congealed in clay, on a wooden field, where human flesh plays with bones.
For, as Diomedes explains, the congealed sea is salt, which is made from sea water: in clay, that is, in a salt-cellar of earthenware, made of potter’s clay and chalk; on a wooden field, that is, on a table: where human flesh, that is, the hand of man, plays with bones, namely dice and knucklebones.
Tyre is a daughter of Tharsis; because Tyre belongs to that region of the Mediterranean sea which was inhabited by Tharsis the son of Javan, Genesis chapter 10, verse 4.
Again, she is the daughter of Tharsis, that is, of the Red Sea; because Tyre was a colony of those who dwelt by the Red or Erythraean sea, namely by the Arabian gulf, as Pliny teaches, book 4, chapter 22; Strabo, book 2; Dionysius Afer, verse 906. Hence also in Baetica Tartessus near Gades, a city and colony of the Tyrians, was called Erythria; because the Tyrians, its aborigines, are said to have sprung from the Erythraean sea, says Pliny in the same place.
Some think that Tharsis was a city by the Red Sea, which led out a colony and founded Tyre, and that therefore the Tyrians gave the name of their mother-city to their daughter, namely Carthage, and called it Tharsis: hence the Septuagint here and often elsewhere, and our Interpreter, Ezechiel 27:12, render Tharsis by Carthage.
Thou hast a girdle no more.—First, Sanchez expounds thus: as if to say: That noble emporium of Tyre will be so stripped that not even one girdle will be left, which is the cheapest among the wares of old-clothes dealers and hawkers.
Secondly, the Chaldee and Symmachus: there is no girdle, that is, thou hast no strength of soldiers: for these gird the sword upon them with a girdle, as if to say: Thou shalt not be able any longer to resist the Chaldean.