Sidon #49

Sidon is an ancient Phoenician port city on the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon, roughly twenty miles north of Tyre. It was one of the oldest and most important cities of the Phoenicians, and in the Bible its name often stands for Phoenicia as a whole. Because it lay just beyond Israel’s northern border, it appears in Scripture as a neighbor, a source of foreign influence, and a place that both Jesus and Paul visited.

Biblical Significance

Sidon is named in the Table of Nations as the firstborn son of Canaan (Genesis 10:15), and it marks the northern edge of Canaanite territory (Genesis 10:19). The tribe of Asher was assigned land reaching toward Sidon, but the Israelites did not drive out its inhabitants (Joshua 19:28; Judges 1:31). The people of Laish, later conquered by the Danites, are described as living quietly in the manner of the Sidonians (Judges 18:7).

Sidon is linked directly to the religious crisis of the northern kingdom. Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal (1 Kings 16:31). During the drought that followed, God sent Elijah to Zarephath, a town that belonged to Sidon, where a widow shared her last flour and oil with him and was sustained through the famine (1 Kings 17:8-16). Jesus recalled this incident in Nazareth to show that God’s mercy had reached beyond Israel (Luke 4:25-26). The prophets also announced judgment on Sidon alongside Tyre (Isaiah 23:1-4; Joel 3:4).

In the Gospels, Jesus warned the Galilean towns that Tyre and Sidon would have repented if they had seen his miracles (Matthew 11:21-22). He withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon, where a Canaanite, or Syrophoenician, woman pleaded for her daughter’s healing and was praised for her faith (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30). Mark describes Jesus’ route as passing through Sidon on the way to the Decapolis (Mark 7:31). In Acts, when Paul was being taken to Rome as a prisoner, the ship put in at Sidon, where the centurion allowed him to visit friends and receive care (Acts 27:3).

Today

Sidon is the modern city of Saida, the third largest city of Lebanon. It preserves a medieval Sea Castle, built by Crusaders on a small island connected to the shore by a causeway, and an old souk and harbor. Excavations have uncovered Phoenician-era burial chambers and, in the nineteenth century, remarkable sarcophagi, including that of King Eshmunazar II, now in the Louvre. Because the modern city sits on top of the ancient one, the layers of Iron Age and Roman Sidon are only partly explored.