Cyprus

Cyprus is the large Mediterranean island lying off the coasts of Cilicia and Phoenicia. In the Hebrew Scriptures it appears under the name Kittim (older English: Chittim), a term that begins as the proper name of a people descended from Javan and broadens, in later prophetic usage, into a label for the western coastlands and seafaring powers reached by ship from the Levant. By the Hellenistic period the same name "Cyprus" used in Greek and Latin is current in 1 Maccabees, where the island appears in a list of Mediterranean states.

A Son of Javan

The Table of Nations places Kittim in the second generation from Japheth: "And the sons of Javan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim" (Gen 10:4). Kittim is grouped with Elishah, Tarshish, and Rodanim — names elsewhere associated with maritime peoples and islands — establishing from the outset that the bearer of the name belongs to the seafaring Aegean and east-Mediterranean world rather than the inland Near East.

Geography Opposite Phoenicia

The Kittim of the prophets sit across the sea from the Phoenician coast. Isaiah, addressing the fall of Tyre, tells the Tarshish ships that the news has reached them "from the land of Kittim" (Isa 23:1) and tells the daughter of Sidon, "arise, pass over to Kittim; even there you will have no rest" (Isa 23:12). Sidon's flight by sea lands her on Kittim, which fits the geographic position of Cyprus directly opposite the Phoenician coast.

Jeremiah uses the same point of reference as the western horizon of the known world: "For pass over to the isles of Kittim, and see; and send to Kedar, and consider diligently" (Jer 2:10). Kittim and Kedar function here as the western and eastern bookends; the prophet appeals to the most distant witnesses on either hand. The plural "isles" — used also in Ezekiel — suggests that by the prophetic period the term names not only Cyprus itself but the broader western coastlands and islands reached by way of it.

Commerce with Tyre

Ezekiel's lament over Tyre catalogues the shipwright's materials drawn from the surrounding world: "Of the oaks of Bashan they have made your oars; they have made your benches of ivory inlaid in cypress-wood, from the isles of Kittim" (Eze 27:6). The decking timber for Tyre's ships is named as cypress-wood from the isles of Kittim — a concrete trade good moving from the island to the Phoenician shipyards.

Naval Power in Prophecy

The Kittim also enter the prophetic corpus as a naval threat. Balaam's fourth oracle, after foretelling Asshur and Eber, looks beyond them to a power that comes by sea: "Those who go out from the coast of Kittim, And they will afflict Asshur, and will afflict Eber; And he also will perish forever" (Num 24:24). The image is of forces moving from the Mediterranean coast inland against the great river-valley empires.

Daniel reuses the same prophetic formula. Of the king of the north, the angel says, "For ships of Kittim will come against him; therefore he will be grieved, and will return, and have indignation against the holy covenant" (Dan 11:30). The "ships of Kittim" turn back the king's southern campaign and divert his anger onto the holy covenant. The phrase preserves the older prophetic vocabulary even as it is applied to a new historical moment.

Cyprus in the Hellenistic List

In the Hellenistic period the Greek name of the island appears directly. In 1 Maccabees, the Roman consul's letter on behalf of the Jews is sent "to all the countries: and to Lampsacus, and to the Spartans, and to Delos, and Myndus, and Sicyon, and Caria, and Samos, and Pamphylia, and Lycia, and Halicarnassus, and Cos, and Side, and Aradus, and Rhodes, and Phaselis, and Gortyna, and Cnidus, and Cyprus, and Cyrene" (1Ma 15:23). Cyprus stands in this list as one Mediterranean polity among others to whom the diplomatic notice is forwarded — by this date it is simply one of the named addresses of the eastern Mediterranean world.