Tyre
צֹר
Where was biblical Tyre? At Sur, in Lebanon, about 55 km north of Haifa. I mark it certain.
King Hiram ruled this island port. He sent cedar, carpenters and masons to build David's palace, and his cedar and craftsmen went into Solomon's Temple too.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Sur, in Lebanon
- How sure
- Certain The name, the sources and the finds all agree.
- Other names
- Tzor, Tsor, Sur, Sour, Tyros
- Location
- 33.2705° N, 35.2038° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Tyre never lost its name. The Hebrew is Tzor and the Arabic is Sur, and they are the same name. It means rock, after the rocky island where the city stood. People have lived here without a break, and Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek and Roman writers all describe the same island city. In the Book of Joshua it is already "the fortified city of Tyre," at the edge of Asher's border.
Look at a map today and you won't find an island. Tyre sits on a peninsula joined to the coast. Yet Ezekiel calls it the city that dwells "at the gateways of the sea." The text isn't being poetic. It's being literal. In 332 BCE Alexander the Great built a causeway from the mainland to reach the island and capture it. Sand piled up against the causeway until the island and the coast became one.
The friendship came first. Hiram had always loved David. When Solomon took the throne, Hiram sent envoys to him, and the cedars of Lebanon came down to Jerusalem.
Centuries later Ezekiel turned on Tyre's wealth and pride. He foretold that its walls would be torn down and its rock scraped bare, a place for fishermen to dry their nets in the sea. The city that called itself perfect in beauty would be left a bare rock, true to its name.
Visiting today
Tyre is in Lebanon and closed to Israeli visitors. Its excavated ruins are mostly Roman and Byzantine, with a colonnaded street, a hippodrome and a large cemetery.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Tyre on the interactive map →
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