Isaiah 23:8 - Exposition

Who hath taken this counsel ? Who can have conceived the thought of destroying a city at once so powerful and so conducive to the advantage of other states? The answer is given in the next verse. The crowning city ; i.e. "the dispenser of crowns." Either to the governors of her colonies, or perhaps to the other cities of Phoenicia Proper. It is not quite clear whether the kings of those cities needed the sanction of Tyro to confirm them on their thrones, or not. The Hebrew word used must certainly be rendered "crowning," and not "crowned." Whose merchants are princes. Not actually sovereigns, but the chief men in the state under the king. Traffickers ; literally, Canaanites . But the ethnic name seems to have early acquired the secondary meaning of "traders" (see Proverbs 31:24 ; Job 41:6 ).