Is this your joyous city - Is this the city that was just now so full of happiness, of revelry, of business, of gaiety, of rejoicing? (see the note at Isaiah 22:2)
Whose antiquity is of ancient days - Strabo (xvi. 756) says, ‘After Sidon, Tyre, a splendid and most ancient city, is to be compared in greatness, beauty, and antiquity, with Sidon.’ Curtius (Hist. Alex. iv. 4) says, ‘The city was taken, distinguished both by its antiquity, and its great variety of fortune.’ Arrian (ii. 16) says, that ‘the Temple of Hercules at Tyre was the most ancient of those which the memory of people have preserved.’ And Herodotus (ii. 44) says, that in a conversation which he had with the priest of that temple, he informed him that it had then existed for 2300 years. Josephus, indeed, says (Ant. viii. 3. 1) that Tyre was built but 240 years before the temple was built by Solomon - but this was probably a mistake. Justin (xviii. 3) says that Tyre was founded in the year of the destruction of Troy. Its very high antiquity cannot be doubted.
Her own feet shall carry her afar off - Grotius supposes that by feet here, the ‘feet of ships’ are intended, that is, their sails and oars. But the expression is designed evidently to stand in contrast with Isaiah 23:6, and to denote that a part of the inhabitants would go by land into captivity. Probably many of them were taken prisoners by Nebuchadnezzar; and perhaps many of them, when the city was besieged, found opportunity to escape and flee by land to a distant place of safety.