Hiram also sent a vast number of workmen to assist and instruct Solomon's people, none of whom had skill 'to hew timber like the Sidonians.' Solomon, in exchange, furnished the Tyrians with corn, wine, and oil, and received a balance in gold. Solomon and Hiram appear to have subse quently entered into a trading speculation or ad venture upon a large scale. Tyrian shipwrights were accordingly sent to build vessels for both kings at Eziongeber, Solomon's port on the Red Sea, whither he himself went to animate them with his presence (2 Chron. viii :17). These ships, conducted by Tyrian navigators, sailed in company to some rich countries called Ophir and Tarshish, regarding the position of which the learned have multiplied conjectures to little purpose. The voy age occupied three years; yet the returns in this new found trade were very great and profitable. This fleet took in apes, ebony, and parrots on the coasts of Ethiopia, gold at Ophir, or the place of traffic whither the people of Ophir resorted; it traded on both sides of the Red Sea, on the coasts of Arabia and Ethiopia, in all parts of Ethiopia beyond the straits when it had entered the ocean; thence it passed up the Persian Gulf, and might visit the places of trade upon both its shores, and run up the Tigris or the Euphrates as far as these rivers were navigable.
After the reign of Solomon the commerce of the Israelites seems to have very materially declined. An attempt was made by Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and Ahaziah, king of Israel, to effect its revival; but the ships which they built at Ezion geber having been wrecked in the harbor, the un dertaking was abandoned.
(8) Tyre. The rising prosperity of Tyre soon eclipsed the ancient and long-flourishing commer cial city of Sidon. About 600 years before Christ her commercial splendor appears to have been at its height, and is graphically described by Ezekiel (xxvii). The vast wealth that thus flowed into Tyre from all quarters brought with it its too general concomitants—extravagance, dissipation, and relaxation of morals.
The subjection of Tyre, 'the renowned city which was strong on the sea, whose merchants were princes, whose traffickers were the honorable of the earth,' by Cyrus, and its subsequent over throw by Alexander, after a determined and most formidable resistance, terminated alike the gran deur of that city and the history of ancient com merce, as far as they are alluded to in Scripture.
G. M. B.