Bible Strands
Ezekiel 27:28
The countryside will shake when your sailors cry out.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Ezekiel delivers this oracle against Tyre, describing the immediate aftermath of the city's naval and commercial collapse. The declaration occurs as the narrative shifts from the sinking of the merchant fleet to the terrestrial reaction on the shore.
The words — The phrase מִגְרֹשֽׁוֹת (mig.ro.Shot) denotes "pasturelands," and יִרְעֲשׁ֖וּ (yir.'a.Shu) means "they will quake." The text states the open country will tremble specifically at the sound (לְ/ק֖וֹל, le./Kol) of the sailors' outcry (זַעֲקַ֣ת, za.'a.Kat).
The thread — This motif of distant regions trembling at a coastal city's ruin appears in Ezekiel 26:15 and Exodus 15:14, where nations and coastlands react to divine judgment. The pattern links maritime defeat with widespread terrestrial panic.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that commercial collapse triggers universal instability, extending beyond the port to the hinterland. It requires the reader to acknowledge that economic ruin produces tangible, widespread fear rather than isolated loss.
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
The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 26:10 His multitude of horses will cover you in their dust. When he enters your gates as an army entering a breached city, your walls will shake from the noise of cavalry, wagons, and chariots.
- Exodus 15:14 The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the dwellers of Philistia.
- Ezekiel 26:15 This is what the Lord GOD says to Tyre: ‘Will not the coastlands quake at the sound of your downfall, when the wounded groan at the slaughter in your midst?
- Ezekiel 27:35 All the people of the coastlands are appalled over you. Their kings shudder with fear; their faces are contorted.
- Ezekiel 31:16 I made the nations quake at the sound of its downfall, when I cast it down to Sheol with those who descend to the Pit. Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, all the well-watered trees, were consoled in the earth below.
- Nahum 2:3 The shields of his mighty men are red; the valiant warriors are dressed in scarlet. The fittings of the chariots flash like fire on the day they are prepared, and the spears of cypress have been brandished.