Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Isaiah 23:13
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The prophet now proceeds to describe the fate of Phoenicia. "Behold the Chaldean land: this people that has not been (Asshur - it hath prepared the same for desert beasts) - they set up their siege-towers, destroy the palaces of Kena'an, make it a heap of ruins. Mourn, he ships of Tarshish: for your fortress is laid waste." The general meaning of Isa 23:13, as the text now runs, is that the Chaldeans have destroyed Kenaēan, and in fact Tyre. הקימוּ (they set up) points to the plural idea of "this people," and בּחוּניו (chethib בּחיניו) to the singular idea of the same; on the other hand, the feminine suffixes relate to Tyre. "They (the Chaldeans) have laid bare the palaces ('armenoth, from 'armoneth) of Tyre," i.e., have thrown them down, or burned them down to their very foundations (עורר, from ערר = ערה, Psa 137:7, like ערער in Jer 51:58); it (the Chaldean people) has made her (Tyre) a heap of rubbish. So far the text is clear, and there is no ground for hesitation. But the question arises, whether in the words לציּים יסדהּ אשּׁוּר Asshur is the subject or the object. In the former case the prophet points to the land of the Chaldeans, for the purpose of describing the instruments of divine wrath; and having called them "a nation which has not been" (היה לא), explains this by saying that Asshur first founded the land which the Chaldeans now inhabit for them, i.e., wild hordes ( Psa 72:9); or better still (as tziyyim can hardly signify mountain hordes), that Asshur has made it (this nation, עם fem., as in Jer 8:5; Exo 5:16) into dwellers in steppes (Knobel), which could not be conceived of in any other way than that Asshur settled the Chaldeans, who inhabited the northern mountains, in the present so-called land of Chaldea, and thus made the Chaldeans into a people, i.e., a settled, cultivated people, and a people bent on conquest and taking part in the history of the world (according to Knobel, primarily as a component part of the Assyrian army). But this view, which we meet with even in Calvin, is exposed to a grave difficulty. It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the Chaldeans, who were descendants of Nahor, according to Gen 22:22, and therefore of Semitic descent, (Note: Arpachshad ( Gen 10:22), probably the ancestor of the oldest Chaldeans, was also Semitic, whether his name is equivalent to Armachshad (the Chaldean high-land) or not. Arrapachitis rings like Albagh, the name of the table-land between the lake of Urmia and that of Van, according to which shad was the common Armenian termination for names of places.) came down from the mountains which bound Armenia, Media, and Assyria, having been forced out by the primitive migration of the Arians from west to east; although the more modern hypothesis, which represents them as a people of Tatar descent, and as mixing among the Shemites of the countries of the Euphrates and Tigris, has no historical support whatever, the very reverse being the case, according to Gen 10, since Babylon was of non-Semitic or Cushite origin, and therefore the land of Chaldea, as only a portion of Babylonia (Strabo, xvi. 1, 6), was the land of the Shemites. But the idea that the Assyrians brought them down from the mountains into the lowlands, though not under Ninus and Semiramis, (Note: The same view is held by Oppert, though he regards the Casdim as the primitive Turanian (Tatar) inhabitants of Shinar, and supposes this passage to relate to their subjugation by the Semitic Assyrians.) as Vitri…
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