(6) Pass ye over to Tarshish . . .--The words have the ring of a keen irony. The Tyrians are told to go to Tarshish, the extreme point of their commerce; not, as before, to bring back their wealth, but to seek safety there as exiles. No nearer asylum would give them safety. So, in the siege of Tyre by Alexander the Great, the Tyrians sent their old men, women, and children to Carthage (Diod. Sic. xvii. 41). So Layard (Nineveh, plate 71) represents enemies of the Assyrians taking refuge in ships (Cheyne). The "isle" or "coast" is, as before, Tyre, and. its neighbourhoods.

Verse 6. - Pass ye over to Tarshish. The advice was good, and may, perhaps, have been followed to some extent. When Sennacherib attacked Elulaeus of Sidon ( B.C. 701), that monarch fled across the sea ('Records of the Past,' vol. 1. p. 35), probably to Cyprus. When Alexander finally ruined Tyre, a part of the population made its escape on shipboard to Carthage (Arrian,' Exp. Alex.,' 2:24, § 8). An escape of the kind is represented in the Assyrian sculptures (Layard, 'Monuments of Nineveh,' first series, pl. 7l).

23:1-14 Tyre was the mart of the nations. She was noted for mirth and diversions; and this made her loth to consider the warnings God gave by his servants. Her merchants were princes, and lived like princes. Tyre being destroyed and laid waste, the merchants should abandon her. Flee to shift for thine own safety; but those that are uneasy in one place, will be so in another; for when God's judgments pursue sinners, they will overtake them. Whence shall all this trouble come? It is a destruction from the Almighty. God designed to convince men of the vanity and uncertainty of all earthly glory. Let the ruin of Tyre warn all places and persons to take heed of pride; for he who exalts himself shall be abased. God will do it, who has all power in his hand; but the Chaldeans shall be the instruments.Pass ye over to Tarshish,.... Either to Tartessus in Spain, or to Tarsus in Cilicia, which lay over against them, and to which they might transport themselves, families, and substance, with greater ease; or "to a province of the sea", as the Targum, any other seaport; the Septuagint says to Carthage, which was a colony of the Tyrians; and hither the Assyrian (u) historians say they did transport themselves; though Kimchi thinks this is spoken, not to the Tyrians, but to the merchants that traded with them, to go elsewhere with their merchandise, since their goods could no more be disposed of in that city as usual.

Howl, ye inhabitants of the isle: of Tyre, as in Isaiah 23:2 or of every isle, as Aben Ezra, which traded here, because now their commerce was at an end; so Kimchi.

(u) Apud Hieron. in loc.