What Does Isaiah 23:17 Mean in the King James?
And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The LORD’s visitation reopens Tyre’s trade, but return to movement can still carry the same appetite for exchange.
THE MEANING
A long interval reaches its end, and the LORD attends to Tyre; she returns to earning her hire and enters the kingdoms through the verse’s image of sexual commerce. Return and unchanged appetite occupy the same frame: what reopens can still seek exchange with every power around it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A new opening does not by itself mean desire has changed: Tyre returns to her trade and to entanglement with the kingdoms.
THE ROOT
יִפְקֹד
yifqod
GROWS FROM
פקד
Attend to, take note of; muster or appoint.
The Hebrew verb behind “visit” belongs to a family of attending, mustering, and appointing. Its branches name oversight and an appointed overseer, so this visitation is consequential attention: Tyre is noticed, and her course resumes within that attention.
ALSO GROWS
pequddah: Appointment, oversight, charge.
פְּקֻדָּה
This branch shows the root’s sense of attention that places something under care or responsibility.
paqīd: Appointed official, overseer.
פָּקִיד
The same consonants name one who is assigned to oversee, giving “visit” a shade of active regard rather than mere arrival.
וְשָׁבָה
veshavah
GROWS FROM
שוב
Turn back, return.
The verse’s “return” is שׁוּב, a turning back toward a former course. Its branches can name return or backsliding, so return itself does not tell you whether the destination has changed.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun carries the same consonants and makes the turning in Tyre’s return visible.
meshuvah: Turning away, backsliding.
מְשׁוּבָה
This branch shows that the same seed can describe a turn that moves away from what is sought; direction depends on where the return leads.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses sexual commerce to expose bonds in which intimacy, loyalty, and provision are traded for advantage.
For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.THE THREAD
Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:The same Hebrew root, פקד, stands behind “visited” here and “will visit Tyre.” Exodus pairs that visitation with seeing what is being done, opening the word as active attention to a condition, not simply a stop or arrival.
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