Who has counseled this against Tyre who crowns?
Isaiah 23:8–9
Whose merchants are princes, whose traders are the honored ones of the land?
YHWH of Hosts has counseled this to profane the majesty of all beauty,1
To curse all the honored ones of the land.
Temporarily put aside that this is a judgment passage. Note how Isaiah describes the merchants of Tyre. He describes them as glorious–the honored of their city–and with the word beauty. Beauty is a significant concept in Isaiah and the other prophets. Beauty is described as belonging to Zion, Jerusalem, the temple, the Messiah, to God’s people, and to kings. David referred to Jonathan and Saul as the beauty of Israel. In talking about Tyre, however, God through Isaiah ascribes beauty in some capacity to merchants and traders. How should we think about this theologically?
All the other things ascribed this beauty–including pagan kings–derive their beauty in God. Jerusalem is beautiful insomuch as it is a place of God. The people of God find the source of their beauty in belonging to God. Kings derive beauty through the specific divine appointment of their authority from God. This is true for merchants as well, yet differently. The merchant city of Tyre was beautiful materially, but ultimately this beauty points back to God. Merchants and traders found their beauty in producing good things, in partnering with God to bring good things into creation, in reflecting as image-bearers the creativity of their creator.
This should change how we view secular work. Merchants, traders, and many in secular work are rightly intended to use creation for human flourishing; God views this as beautiful. The fruits of the businessman involve the successful beauty created by man in dominion of the earth. They make the world more beautiful.
This is however a judgment passage. But the merchants of Tyre were no punished for their material beauty or their wealth. They were punished not for beauty, but for failure to worship the God of Israel, and in the context of Isaiah, for their indirect role in the destruction of Israel and Judah. God acknowledged the beauty and glory that Tyre had rightfully and really produced. How much better would it be, then, for today’s business people to create beauty in this world, but to do so acknowledging their God and creator?
1 I have used beauty throughout as a translation of Ṣəb̲î. Formal English translation often use different words in the same semantic domain; I believe in the context of the other related words in Isaiah 23 beauty best represents what the text presents here.
Citizens & Sons 