Acts 21:3
Now when we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the left hand, and sailed into Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there the ship was to unlade her burden.
Now when we had discovered Cyprus,.... An island, as the Syriac version here calls it, which lay between Syria and Cilicia;
See Gill on "Acts 4:36"; and was, according to R. Benjamin {l}, four days sail from Rhodes, before mentioned:
we left it on the left hand, and sailed into Syria; that part of it called Phoenicia:
and landed at Tyre; the chief city of Phoenicia, famous for navigation and commerce: it stood about four furlongs distant from the shore, and was joined to the continent by Alexander the great {m}. The account Jerom {n} gives of it is this,
"Tyre, the metropolis of Phoenicia, in the tribe of Nephthalim, is near twenty miles from Caesarea Philippi; this was formerly an island, but made continent land by Alexander:--its chief excellency lies in shell fish and purple.''
It was a very ancient city, though it seems not so ancient as Sidon, from whence it was distant about two hundred furlongs. Herodotus {o} says, that in his time it had been inhabited two thousand three hundred years; Hiram was king of it in Solomon's time; yea, mention is made of it in Joshua's time, if the text in Joshua 19:29 is rightly translated: some say it was built seventy six years before the destruction of Troy. It is to be distinguished into old Tyre, which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the island of Tyre, which was conquered by Alexander, and new Tyre annexed, by him to the continent. In the Hebrew language it is called rwu, "Tzur", or "Tzor", which signifies a "rock", being built on one; though some think it has its name from rwhu, "Tzehor", which signifies "brightness"; it is now called Sur or Suri, and is quite desolate, being only a receptacle of thieves and robbers: though R. Benjamin says, in his time, new Tyre was a very good city, and had a port within it, into which ships go between two towers; and that there were in it four hundred Jews, and some of them skilful in the Talmud; --who further observes, that if anyone ascended the walls of new Tyre, he might see Tyre the crowning city, Isaiah 23:8 which was a stone's cast from the new; but if a man would go in a boat on the sea, he might see towers, streets, and palaces in the bottom {p}:
for there the ship was to unlade her burden; which she had taken in, in the ports where she had been, but where is not certain; for that she had been at Ephesus, and took in her lading there, as Grotius thinks, does not appear; since this was not the ship the apostle and his company sailed in from Miletus, but which they went aboard at Patara, Acts 21:1.
{l} Itinerar. p. 30.
{m} Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 19. Mela, l. 1. c. 12.
{n} De locis Hebraicis, fol. 96. K.
{o} Euterpe, l. 2. c. 44.
{p} ltinerar. p. 35, 36.