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Isaiah 23 is a prophecy about the fall of the trading city Tyre. The Greek Septuagint names Carthage instead, changing the same passage into a prophecy about the fall of a city the translators were familiar with.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 23:1
Hebrew Bible
1 This is an oracle about Tyre: Wail, you large ships, for the port is too devastated to enter! From the land of Cyprus this news is announced to them. 2 Lament, you residents of the coast, you merchants of Sidon who travel over the sea, whose agents sail over 3 the deep waters. Grain from the Shihor region, crops grown near the Nile she receives; she is the trade center of the nations.
LXX Isaiah 23:1
Septuagint
1 The vision of Tyre. Wail, O ships of Carthage, for she has perished, and people no longer come from the land of the Kitieans: she has been led captive. 2 To whom have become similar those who dwell in the island— the merchants of Phoenicia, crossing the sea 3 on much water, an offspring of merchants? The merchants of the nations are as when a harvest is being gathered in.
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Notes and References
... This type of “visionary” interpretation seems to lie at the basis of the Septuagint of Isaiah 23. In sum, as far as the aspect of fulfilment-interpretation is concerned, the vision of Tyre in the Septuagint of Isaiah 23 can very well be understood as witnessing to the interpretation of following political events as signs of the time in the light of the ancient oracle of Isaiah 23 in Hebrew: the complete destruction of Carthage by the Romans in the year 146 B.C., seen as having serious consequences for the position of Tyre, the mother-city of Carthage; the Parthian invasion in Babylonia, presumably understood as a sign of the nearby breakdown of the Seleucid empire; the involvement of Tyre, in some way or another, in the Hellenization of the city and temple of Jerusalem. ...
van der Kooij, Arie
The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah XXIII as Version and Vision
(p. 109) Brill, 1998
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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