Isaiah 23:16
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
Take an harp, go about the city, you harlot that have been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
American King James Version (AKJV)
Take an harp, go about the city, you harlot that have been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
American Standard Version (ASV)
Take a harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
Take an instrument of music, go about the town, O loose woman who has gone out from the memory of man; make sweet melody with songs, so that you may come back to men's minds.
Webster's Revision
Take a harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.
World English Bible
Take a harp; go about the city, you prostitute that has been forgotten. Make sweet melody. Sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
English Revised Version (ERV)
Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.
Barnes's Isaiah 23:16 Bible Commentary
Take an harp - This is a continuation of the figure commenced in the previous verse, a direct command to Tyre as an harlot, to go about the city with the usual expressions of rejoicing. Thus Donatus, in Terent. Eunuch., iii. 2, 4, says:
'Fidicinam esse meretricum est;'
And thus Horace:
'Nec meretrix tibicina, cujus
Ad strepitum salias.'
1 Epis. xiv. 25.
Thou harlot that hast been forgotten - For seventy years thou hast lain unknown, desolate, ruined.
Make sweet melody ... - Still the prophet keeps up the idea of the harlot that had been forgotten, and that would now call her lovers again to her dwelling. The sense is, that Tyre would rise to her former splendor, and that the nations would be attracted by the proofs of returning prosperity to renew their commercial contact with her.
Wesley's Isaiah 23:16 Bible Commentary
23:16 Go about - As harlots use to do. Thou harlot - So he calls Tyre, because she enticed the merchants to deal with her by various artifices, and even by dishonest practices, and because of the great and general uncleanness which was committed in it.
