23:1 Here is a message about Tyre:
Wail, you large ships, 1
for the port is too devastated to enter! 2
From the land of Cyprus 3 this news is announced to them.
24:24 Ships will come from the coast of Kittim, 4
and will afflict Asshur, 5 and will afflict Eber,
and he will also perish forever.” 6
27:6 They made your oars from oaks of Bashan;
they made your deck 7 with cypresses 8 from the Kittean isles. 9
1 tn Heb “ships of Tarshish.” This probably refers to large ships either made in or capable of traveling to the distant western port of Tarshish.
2 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “for it is destroyed, from a house, from entering.” The translation assumes that the mem (מ) on בַּיִת (bayit) was originally an enclitic mem suffixed to the preceding verb. This assumption allows one to take בַּיִת as the subject of the preceding verb. It is used in a metaphorical sense for the port city of Tyre. The preposition min (מִן) prefixed to בּוֹא (bo’) indicates negative consequence: “so that no one can enter.” See BDB 583 s.v. מִן 7.b.
3 tn Heb “the Kittim,” a designation for the people of Cyprus. See HALOT 504-05 s.v. כִּתִּיִּים.
4 tc The MT is difficult. The Kittim refers normally to Cyprus, or any maritime people to the west. W. F. Albright proposed emending the line to “islands will gather in the north, ships from the distant sea” (“The Oracles of Balaam,” JBL 63 [1944]: 222-23). Some commentators accept that reading as the original state of the text, since the present MT makes little sense.
5 tn Or perhaps “Assyria” (so NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
6 tn Or “it will end in utter destruction.”
7 tn Or “hull.”
8 tc The Hebrew reads “Your deck they made ivory, daughter of Assyria.” The syntactically difficult “ivory” is understood here as dittography and omitted, though some construe this to refer to ivory inlays. “Daughter of Assyria” is understood here as improper word division and the vowels repointed as “cypresses.”
9 tn Heb “from the coastlands (or islands) of Kittim,” generally understood to be a reference to the island of Cyprus, where the Phoenicians had a trading colony on the southeast coast. Many modern English versions have “Cyprus” (CEV, TEV), “the coastlands of Cyprus” (NASB), “the coasts of Cyprus” (NIV, NRSV), or “the southern coasts of Cyprus” (NLT).