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Selected Verse: Isaiah 23:16 - King James
Verse |
Translation |
Text |
Isa 23:16 |
King James |
Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
Same figure [Isa 23:15] to express that Tyre would again prosper and attract commercial intercourse of nations to her, and be the same joyous, self-indulging city as before. |
Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
Take an harp - This is a continuation of the figure commenced in the previous verse, a direct command to Tyre as an harlot, to go about the city with the usual expressions of rejoicing. Thus Donatus, in Terent. Eunuch., iii. 2, 4, says:
'Fidicinam esse meretricum est;'
And thus Horace:
'Nec meretrix tibicina, cujus
Ad strepitum salias.'
1 Epis. xiv. 25.
Thou harlot that hast been forgotten - For seventy years thou hast lain unknown, desolate, ruined.
Make sweet melody ... - Still the prophet keeps up the idea of the harlot that had been forgotten, and that would now call her lovers again to her dwelling. The sense is, that Tyre would rise to her former splendor, and that the nations would be attracted by the proofs of returning prosperity to renew their commercial contact with her. |
Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
Go about - As harlots use to do. Thou harlot - So he calls Tyre, because she enticed the merchants to deal with her by various artifices, and even by dishonest practices, and because of the great and general uncleanness which was committed in it. |
15 And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot.