What is the significance of the city of Sidon in the Bible?

"And Jesus going forth from thence, went away into parts of Tyre and Sidon." He left the religious Pharisees with their hypocrisies and deceitful dealings. He turns His back upon all, and chooses for His path a country where religious observances were unknown, where sin and misery held sway. How significant once more! A foreshadowing again of what should happen soon: the Gospel to be sent to the Gentiles. And now we read of her who is the object of His divine compassion, and through her the Lord manifests His rich grace and power to deliver from evil.

155 Then we turn to the other side of the picture, in which God's heart is brought out (in the case of the woman of Canaan) (v. 21-28). This woman had not the pride of human distinction in which the Jews gloried. She was neither a Jewess nor a Pharisee - quite the contrary; she belonged to a city which God had held up as a most reprobate city; Matt. 11:2I. She was a Syrophoenician - a Canaanite - of a race held in the Old Testament to be accursed (Gen. 9:25-27), whence nothing of repentance could be expected. The Lord comes into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, peopled by the descendants of Canaan ("cursed is Canaan"). That is where grace ever comes. And she was one of these outcasts in the fullest sense of the word. She had no privileges, no claims. Well, she recognises Him here as the Lord, the Son of David, and salutes Him as such. As such she knew what mercies He had brought among the Jews; and she comes and asks for blessing. He does not answer her a word. He takes no notice of her whatever. His ear was closed to her request, at least so far as that He gave her no answer. A repentant Jew might have appealed to Him under this title. He was in the place of the promise which Messiah came to accomplish. "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," v. 24. But for this there must be some claim to the promise. If you meet Christ on the ground of what He is as promised to Israel, you must have some fitness for the promise, some claim to it. If you are seeking by righteousness to get the help of grace, that is not my errand, says Christ; I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

24, et seq. The Lord had left the Pharisees and their haunts, and came into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon - a country in fact allotted to Israel, but possessed by Gentiles, their enemies amongst the Gentiles. It was really Israel in title, but actually Gentiles, so that He had left what practically constituted Israel now. There He would have been alone, not out of the territory of Israel but away from Israel, standing in the counsel of God as to it, but separate from the state of man in it. But His patient, gracious power had too widely spread His name. "He could not be hid." A woman heard of Him. Thus grace to the Gentile shown by abounding grace to the Jew, while the Lord strictly kept Himself as sent to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But, if unbelief was sadly manifested in Israel, sorrow and Satan had their power over the Gentile also, and there the Lord's compassion had its way. The woman had a daughter who "had an unclean spirit, and coming she fell down at His feet. She was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by race," one entirely an outcast, a dog. The Lord's heart had not at all left Israel, in spite of all their evil and rejection. "Suffer the children to be first filled; for it is not right to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" - curs, vile dogs. But she said, "Yea, Lord," or "Nay, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs of the children, under the table." Most blessed answer! How true - how full of understanding of God's ways! How honouring to His glorious counsels in exalting whom He would, and counting them exalted whom God had in spite of all; though to her own dishonour! What persevering confidence in the character of God, and in Jesus as the minister and exhibition of it! Owning all the dispensations of God actually, yet seeing through them all to the depths of His character of love and grace within, and pleading with Jesus on it, and all through the sense of need. What an instructor, through grace! That is, God having opened His heart in Jesus, but this woman saw through rejection, for the Lord was to be sought here in Israel. How blessedly was He led! How by divine power was she led also! And as the Lord stood the witness of patient love, but in the secret of His own glory, so she brought by being humble and utterly self-abased to the deep and gladdening knowledge of divine dispensations - for God had children there He loved as such - and that yet deeper knowledge, that secret of divine love which gave her power, if one may so speak, over the springs of the heart of Jesus, because it was in the divine nature and perfectness of which He was the witness, and thus He was glorified in His wider and supreme glory. How blessedly, while in perfect obedience here as a Servant to these rebellious Israelites for the Father's sake, did the light break forth, the light of the glory of that Father break forth in Him! Yet what glory (by being utterly self-abased) to be in the position which should draw forth, and be the object on which all the best glory of the humbled Son of man, the Lord Jesus, should shine! This poor outcast woman vindicated His glory when rejected; so every poor, humbled sinner - such is his place, not in exalting himself, but in his humiliation he is the exalter of a rejected Jesus as the displayer (as the object) of His character and glory, otherwise that glory would be lost in His humiliation; but here it is displayed. It is a glorious place - yet the lowest of us of Him. And how do these extremes, the poor manifested sinner and (the drawing forth) the glory of God in its highest character, meet here! May we have real humiliation, even in taking our true place, and, herewith, clear understanding of the dispensations of God, and the glory of God in them in spite of the wickedness of man, while man in them only finds his own glory to prop up and maintain his wickedness, and secure him from the charge of ungodliness on his conscience!

Christ now leaves the borders of Israel, and His disputes with the learned men of Jerusalem, to visit those places which were farthest off from Jewish privileges. He departs into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, the cities which He had Himself used as examples of that which was farthest from repentance; see Matthew 11, where He classes them with Sodom and Gomorrah as more hardened than they. A woman comes out of these countries. She was one of the accursed race, according to the principles that distinguished Israel. She was a Canaanite. She comes to beg the interposition of Jesus on behalf of her daughter, who was possessed by a devil.

Men in general, like the Pharisees here, are occupied about what is outside: the washing of hands before eating bread, the washing of cups, the traditions of the elders, have the first place in their thoughts. With what amazing power must these words of the Lord Jesus have fallen on their ears: — "Hear and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." What a picture of a man's heart! the seat of all wickedness and folly, the cage of every unclean bird! a filthy, polluted swamp, out of which issue the streams of sorrow and death. My reader, this is your heart! Have you owned it, bowed to it, submitted yourself to the judgment of God so expressed? so much so that to you it is a comfort past description to turn away from yourself to Him — that blessed One, whose heart, full of goodness, is towards you, and whose word to you is, "I cannot trust you; you may trust me"? Have you so turned to Him? It is not a little remarkable that, immediately after exposing the heart of man, the Lord left the place of boasted privilege for the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, which were outside the region of earthly blessing, and the people in covenant relationship with God; and here, in the defiled place, as it were, He manifests the heart of God as fully as previously in the place of outward privilege he exposed the heart of man. The boasted goodness of the land of Israel could not change the heart of man, and the known wretchedness and contempt connected with Tyre and Sidon could not take away from what was in the heart of God. A woman of Canaan, belonging to a cursed race, a descendant of Ham, in her distress cries after Him: "Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David! my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." He who was tenderness itself answers her not a word! What can it be; is there no pity in Him?

"Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto Him." (vv. 21, 22.) Tyre and Sidon were anything but Jerusalem; they were places proverbial for their wickedness. The Lord selects them as such when He says (Matt. 11), "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." He holds them up as two of the vilest cities He could have named. Again: this woman, as a woman of Canaan, not only was a Gentile, a "dog" (v. 26) - that was her character in the eye of man, yes, and according to the truth of God also, so far as regarded the outward condition of things at that time - but a woman of that people concerning which God had said, "Cursed be Canaan." (Gen. 9:25.)

So that here we get evidently the very opposite to, and that which stands in greatest contrast with, the scribes and Pharisees (the religious persons) of Jerusalem, and indeed with everything that could claim authority in religion, or even the appearance of a fair show in the flesh, a woman of Canaan, out of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.

The daughter of the woman of Canaan: recorded in Matt. 15 and Mark 7 The parent here was a Gentile, springing from an accursed race. The Lord Himself was in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, a very stronghold of the devil, as Ezekiel 28:11-19 testifies, and her daughter was grievously vexed with a demon. The poor woman, though an outcast, a mere dog, brought the case of her child to Jesus. She was not heard at once. The Lord used the occasion of the intensity of her affliction to work a wholesome state of honesty and humility and confession in her soul. But, when she took her own true place and incidentally expressed her faith in the largeness of His bounty that would overflow to a Gentile dog such as she was, she got to the full the desire of her heart in her daughter's deliverance. Her appeal was effectual. She was heard.

Zidon is denounced by the prophets for destruction. It is charged with being a 'pricking brier' to the house of Israel, and a 'grieving thorn' around them. Ezek. 28:21-24. Jehovah says of Zidon, in conjunction with Tyre, that they had taken His gold and silver and pleasant things, and carried them into their heathen temples, and had also sold the children of Judah unto the Grecians, to remove them far from their border. Joel 3:4-8. A warning message from Jeremiah was sent to the king of Zidon and neighbouring kings, exhorting them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, who was Jehovah's servant. Jer. 27:3. We do not read that Nebuchadnezzar took Zidon, indeed his lengthy siege of Tyre probably enriched Zidon. The city is mentioned in Gen. 49:13; Isa. 23:2-12; Jer. 25:22; Jer. 47:4; Ezek. 27:8; Zech. 9:2, etc.

The Lord Jesus visited its coasts, and said that it should be more tolerable in the day of judgement for Tyre and Sidon than for the cities in which He had done his mighty works. Matt. 11:21-22; Matt. 15:21; Acts 12:28; Acts 27:3.

Tyre and Sidon, or Zidon, were cities of great antiquity, the latter being the elder; for Zidon, first-born of Canaan, founded the city, and called it by his own name (Gen. 10:15, 19). Hence, in Matthew the woman of Tyre and Sidon is called a Canaanitess (Matt. 15:22). In the time of Joshua, it had grown to be a place of considerable size and importance, and was known as "great Zidon" (Joshua 11:8; 19:28). Zidon was included in the inheritance apportioned to the tribe of Asher (Joshua 19:24-31), but the Asherites failed to take full possession of their inheritance. They did not drive out the inhabitants of Zidon, but dwelt among the Canaanites (Judges 1:31-32).

Eldest son of Canaan, son of Ham, and the city in Phoenicia founded by his descendants. Gen. 10:15, 19. In scripture Tyre is nearly always mentioned first, though it is probable that in early days Zidon had the supremacy, which led to the district of Phoenicia being called Sidon, and the people thereof Zidonians. In Joshua 11:8; Joshua 19:28, it is called 'great Zidon.' It fell to the lot of Asher, but they did not drive out the inhabitants, which led to the Israelites serving the gods of the place. Judges 1:31; Judges 10:6. Solomon also loved some of their women, and imitated their form of idolatry. 1 Kings 11:1, 33.