What Does Isaiah 23:15 Mean?
And in that day, Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king; at the edge of seventy years, Tyre shall sing like a harlot.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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.THE KEY
Tyre’s name bears the hardness of rock, yet its return from forgetting takes the form of a harlot’s song.
THE MEANING
Tyre’s name carries the image of rock, while the verse gives it a measured season of being forgotten: seventy years, as the days of one king. Its return is voiced through the harsh figure of a harlot’s song, a public performance that seeks to be heard and remembered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a solid name guarantees lasting public recognition dissolves here: even Tyre, named for rock, is forgotten for a measured span.
THE ROOT
צֹר
Tzor
GROWS FROM
צוּר
Rock, rocky crag
Tyre’s name carries the rock image; the verse speaks of the loss of memory around it, not a stated loss of the rock itself. The name sharpens the line: physical solidity and public remembrance are different kinds of permanence.
ALSO GROWS
Tzor: Tyre; a name understood as rock
צֹר
The name gives the passage’s city a rock-image before the text tells of its erasure from public memory.
tsur: Rock, crag
צוּר
The common noun makes the name’s hard image visible in Hebrew, sharp against a season of forgetting.
נִשְׁכַּחַת
nishkachath
GROWS FROM
שׁכח
Forget; lose from memory
English passive describes Tyre as the one forgotten, while the root also names the act of forgetting and even causing forgetfulness. The word marks loss of remembrance rather than physical destruction, and its stated seventy years put a boundary around that loss.
ALSO GROWS
shakhach: Forget
שָׁכַח
This is the active form of the same root whose passive form describes Tyre.
hishkiach: Cause to forget
הִשְׁכִּיחַ
This causative branch shows the root can describe making something slip from memory, not only forgetting it oneself.
nishkach: Be forgotten
נִשְׁכַּח
This passive form shares the verse’s root and names the condition Tyre enters.
זֹונָה
zonah
GROWS FROM
זנה
Prostitute oneself; act sexually unfaithfully
“sing like a harlot” in this verse is zonah. The word carries the image’s sexual force; it does not mean a neutral performer. In the next verse, Tyre returns to her hire, making the commercial edge of the figure explicit.
ALSO GROWS
zanah: Act as a prostitute; commit fornication
זָנָה
This verb is the root action behind the figure used to describe Tyre’s song.
zenunim: Prostitution; sexual unfaithfulness
זְנוּנִים
This related noun preserves the sexual force of the image rather than reducing it to ordinary singing.
THE PATTERN
Being forgotten marks a real interval, but it does not prove permanent erasure.
For the needy is not always forgotten; the hope of the bowed ones does not perish forever.Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even they may forget, but I will not forget you.For God is not out of alignment to forget your work and the toil of love, which you have shown toward his nature, in that you have served the set-apart ones, and still serve.THE THREAD
Take up the lyre, go around the city, you harlot who has been forgotten; strike the strings well, multiply the song, so that you may be remembered.The next verse repeats the same שׁכח root in “forgotten,” then names the aim of the song: “that thou mayest be remembered.” It turns the measured season of obscurity into a staged return to public notice.
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