Isaiah 23:8














Egypt was the first of nations, and the masts of the vessels stood hike tall river-reeds by her banks. How expressive the words are! There is life where the river comes, life along the emerald banks to which the cattle come, and on the fields where the waters overflow.

I. ALL LANDS HAVE THEIR RIVERS. Think of the Tiber, the Tigris, the Thames, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Nile, the Niger. Cities rise on their banks which are, like Tyre, populous and prosperous. The harvest is vast indeed. Ships which are freighted with necessaries and luxuries, with the works of art, the spoils of the sea, and the produce of far-away lauds, all come up the river. What wonder that the river should become a type of the blessings of the gospel - that the prophet should tell us "living waters shall flow out of Jerusalem!"

II. THE HARVESTS ARE MANIFOLD. We are so accustomed to think of the golden sheaves of the corn-fields when we mention the rivers, that we are liable to forget how indebted we are to the broad estuaries which bear on their bosom the wealth of many nations. How manifold, too, are our harvests under the gospel! Where that comes philanthropy lives, and social purity flows, and justice is sacred in its rivers of righteousness, and salvation comes, delivering us from sensuality and sin. Harvests? Surely the Christian should notice how wide and vast the gospel waters are.

III. THEIR DRYING UP IS DEATH. We cannot live without rain and rivers. Cattle perish. Verdure withers. Man himself dies. No wealth can purchase what God gives so plentifully. "Hath the rain a Father?" Oh yes. Not a mere Creator, but a Father; for it is rich in evidences of his universal care and love. God gives "the former and the latter rain," and all through the ages the rivers flow into the sea. So God's truth remains! The living water flows, and the voice is still heard, "He, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." - W.M.S.

Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes.
The speaker cannot drop his satire: he has got accustomed to it now; he is in his best vein of mockery. The crowning city was Tyre because she distributed crowns to the Phoenician colonies, — so to say, she kept a whole cupboard full of crowns, and took one out after another, and gave to the little colonies that they might play at being kingdoms (Ezekiel 27:23-25).

(J. Parker, D. D.)

This passage reveals to us the estimation in which merchants were held in ancient time. Tyre was celebrated for her commerce. Her traders were renowned because of their wealth. The treasure they amassed gave them rank and position. They were influential and honoured. Trade was not regarded in old time as a menial, but a noble pursuit. The ambitious entered into it as a means to gratify their ambition. It furnished them with a field in which to exercise their faculties and develop their powers. Subsequently the sword gave rank and power, — valour, and not ability, lifted men to thrones: but before the feudal age, in the ancient time, and among the older civilisations, "merchants were princes, and traffickers were the honourable of the earth."

(W. H. Murray.)

It is not difficult to ascertain the origin of commerce. It was born of men's necessities, and was characterised by the spirit of accommodation. Its birth dates back to the first family that existed on the earth. One had what another needed, and for it he had something to give in exchange. From this mutual need sprang trade. It was a family institution, a method by which the several members of the household could benefit themselves and each other. As families increased and population multiplied, trade enlarged the circle of its operations, became more complex and multiform in its action and agents, and at length grew to be a vast system of exchange; the means of universal accommodation by which every person in the community received and bestowed benefits, and acquired the facilities of a larger and happier life. But it still kept its original significance and family spirit. Such was the origin of trade. There was nothing selfish about it; it was not mercenary, it was benevolent and humane. Centuries later, when it had become a profession, and its agents a class among other classes, there was nothing in its parentage of which it need be ashamed, no reason why those who were engaged in it should not be called "the honourable of the earth."

(W. H. Murray.)

If we would realise more fully the noble part that merchants have played in the history of the world, and the close relation that commerce has always sustained to human progress, we hare only to investigate the origin of cities and consider the forces that pushed them upward in their growth. It was trade that gave birth to our modern cities; a knot of traders beneath the wails of a castle, feeding the castle and protected by it, adding booth to booth and house to house, — so cities arose, so have they been builded. The same is true today. Commercial facilities and necessities are the forces that build our cities. They represent the material forces and results of civilisation. Each city is a hive, and ships and railways are the bees that bring honey to the hive, bringing it from all the world. They fly everywhere, — these bees with sails and wheels for wings, — their flight girdles the earth, and the rush and roar of their going and returning fill the whole air. Now, cities represent progress. In them you see the results of human invention and skill. Here the artist brings his canvas and the sculptor his marble. Hero the loom is represented by the finest fabrics, and architecture lifts the pillars of her power. In cities oratory finds her school, and eloquence her platform; music her applause, and the poet his wreath. Every city is a record, a testimony, an advertisement. In its congregated forces and results you behold the people who built it.

(W. H. Murray.)

Nor would it be well to overlook the use that God has made of commerce in relation to discoveries. The pioneers of civilisation have been ships and traders. The race has, as it were, sailed to its triumphs.

(W. H. Murray.)

I. GOD'S PLAN IS TO GIVE EVERY MAN WHAT HE NEEDS PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, AND SPIRITUALLY.

II. TO REESTABLISH THE FAMILY RELATION AMONG MEN.

(W. H. Murray.)

It is not that individuals may be enriched, — that is only an accidental result, one of the minor consequences; the real object on the part of God, the great result to be achieved, is and will be this: that every man on the face of the whole earth may be supplied with what he needs, in body, mind, and spirit, to the end that he may stand at last clothed in the original beauty and excellence, the likeness of which has for so many ages been lost from the earth.

(W. H. Murray.)

I. MANY MERCHANTS ARE MUCH TRIED WITH LIMITED CAPITAL.

II. MANY MERCHANTS ARE TEMPTED TO OVERCARE AND ANXIETY.

III. MERCHANTS ARE TEMPTED SOMETIMES TO NEGLECT THEIR HOME DUTIES.

IV. MANY MERCHANTS ARE TEMPTED TO MAKE FINANCIAL GAIN OF MORE IMPORTANCE THAN THE SOUL.

(T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)

If ever tempted into reckless speculation, preach to your soul a sermon from the text: "As a partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not, so riches got by fraud; a man shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at the end he shall be a fool."

(T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)

Go where you will, in town or country, you will find half a dozen shops struggling for a custom that would only keep up one. And so they are forced to undersell one another; and, when they have got down the prices all they can by fair means, they are forced to get them lower by foul, and to sand the sugar, and sloeleaf the tea, and put, Satan — that prompts them on — knows what, into the bread; and then they don't thrive — they can't thrive. God's curse must be on them. They began by trying to oust each other and eat each other up, and, while they are eating up their neighbours, their neighbours eat them up, and so they all come to ruin together.

(C. Kingsley, M. A.)

People
Assyrians, Isaiah, Kittim, Tarshish, Zidon
Places
Assyria, Canaan, Cyprus, Egypt, Nile River, Shihor, Sidon, Tarshish, Tyre
Topics
Bestower, Business, Chiefs, Counsel, Counselled, Crowning, Crowns, Dealers, Devised, Distributor, Giver, Honorable, Honored, Honourable, Honoured, Merchants, Planned, Princes, Purposed, Renowned, Town, Traders, Traffickers, Tyre
Outline
1. The miserable overthrow of Tyre
15. Her restoration and unfaithfulness

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 23:8

     5280   crown
     5587   trade

Isaiah 23:8-9

     5857   fame
     5917   plans

Library
The Agony, and the Consoler
Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? Isaiah xxiii. 7. It is difficult to describe the agony of terror which fell on the wretched inhabitants of the gayest city of the East when they awoke to a sense of the folly into which they had been driven. These soft Syrians had no real leaders and no settled purpose of rebellion. They had simply yielded to a childish impulse of vexation. They had rebelled against an increase of taxation which might be burdensome, but was by no means
Frederic William Farrar—Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom

A Prayer for the Spirit of Devotion
6. O Lord my God, Thou art all my good, and who am I that I should dare to speak unto Thee? I am the very poorest of Thy servants, an abject worm, much poorer and more despicable than I know or dare to say. Nevertheless remember, O Lord, that I am nothing, I have nothing, and can do nothing. Thou only art good, just and holy; Thou canst do all things, art over all things, fillest all things, leaving empty only the sinner. Call to mind Thy tender mercies, and fill my heart with Thy grace, Thou
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

How those are to be Admonished who have had Experience of the Sins of the Flesh, and those who have Not.
(Admonition 29.) Differently to be admonished are those who are conscious of sins of the flesh, and those who know them not. For those who have had experience of the sins of the flesh are to be admonished that, at any rate after shipwreck, they should fear the sea, and feel horror at their risk of perdition at least when it has become known to them; lest, having been mercifully preserved after evil deeds committed, by wickedly repeating the same they die. Whence to the soul that sins and never
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

On the Interpretation of Scripture
IT is a strange, though familiar fact, that great differences of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture. All Christians receive the Old and New Testament as sacred writings, but they are not agreed about the meaning which they attribute to them. The book itself remains as at the first; the commentators seem rather to reflect the changing atmosphere of the world or of the Church. Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different point of view, to which their interpretation
Frederick Temple—Essays and Reviews: The Education of the World

The Essay which Brings up the Rear in this Very Guilty Volume is from The...
The Essay which brings up the rear in this very guilty volume is from the pen of the "Rev. Benjamin Jowett, M.A., [Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, and] Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford,"--"a gentleman whose high personal character and general respectability seem to give a weight to his words, which assuredly they do not carry of themselves [143] ." His performance is entitled "On the Interpretation of Scripture:" being, in reality, nothing else but a laborious denial of
John William Burgon—Inspiration and Interpretation

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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