Bible Strands
Ezekiel 27:24
In your marketplace they traded with you fine garments of blue, embroidered work, and multicolored rugs with cords tightly twisted and knotted.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet Ezekiel addresses the exiled community in Babylon while delivering an oracle against the allegorical city of Tyre. The passage catalogs the luxury goods foreign merchants bring to Tyre’s marketplace immediately before describing the city’s maritime destruction.
The words — The Hebrew תְּכֵ֣לֶת (te.khelet) specifies the blue-dyed fabric, and רִקְמָ֔ה (rikmah) denotes the embroidered work. These terms identify the exact textiles traded alongside multicolored rugs and knotted cords.
The thread — The inventory of blue garments and embroidered goods connects directly to the merchants of Haran, Canneh, Eden, Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad listed in Ezekiel 27:23. The subsequent verse (Ezekiel 27:25) notes that ships of Tarshish carried this same merchandise before the cargo sank in the sea.
Why it lands — The text records the precise commercial exchange of Tyre’s marketplace without adding moral evaluation. It requires the reader to observe how intricate craftsmanship and foreign trade networks precede the prophetic account of economic and physical collapse.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 2:8 And Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up, and struck the waters, which parted to the right and to the left, so that the two of them crossed over on dry ground.