Bible Strands
Ezekiel 27:26
Your oarsmen have brought you onto the high seas, but the east wind will shatter you in the heart of the sea.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The oracle addresses the personified city of Tyre, detailing its maritime collapse through Yahweh’s judgment. The speaker declares that the nation’s own crew and cargo will sink into the sea on the day of its downfall.
The words — הַ/שָּׁטִ֖ים (ha./sha.Tim) means “the rowers” and ר֚וּחַ הַ/קָּדִ֔ים (Ru.ach ha./ka.Dim) means “the east wind.” The text states that the crew has navigated the vessel to the open sea, but a destructive wind shatters it there.
The thread — The east wind as a destructive force appears in Psalms 48:7, where it wrecks the ships of Tarshish, and Jeremiah 18:17, where it scatters people before an enemy. Ezekiel 27:26 places the wind’s action directly against the targeted nation’s heart of the sea.
Why it lands — The passage demands recognition that human labor and maritime enterprise cannot prevent divine judgment. It requires the reader to accept that the very agents of a nation’s prosperity become the instruments of its 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
Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.
Cross-references
- Psalms 48:7 With a wind from the east You wrecked the ships of Tarshish.
- Jeremiah 18:17 I will scatter them before the enemy like the east wind. I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their calamity.”
- Ezekiel 26:19 For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘When I make you a desolate city like other deserted cities, and when I raise up the deep against you so that the mighty waters cover you,
- Acts 27:14 But it was not long before a cyclone called the Northeaster swept down across the island.
- Psalms 93:3 The floodwaters have risen, O LORD; the rivers have raised their voice; the seas lift up their pounding waves.
- Isaiah 33:23 Your ropes are slack; they cannot secure the mast or spread the sail. Then an abundance of spoils will be divided, and even the lame will carry off plunder.
- Ezekiel 27:34 Now you are shattered by the seas in the depths of the waters; your merchandise and the people among you have gone down with you.
- Revelation 17:15 Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.
- Acts 27:41 But the ship struck a sandbar and ran aground. The bow stuck fast and would not move, and the stern was being broken up by the pounding of the waves.