Bible Strands
Ezekiel 27:9
The elders of Gebal were aboard as shipwrights, repairing your leaks. All the ships of the sea and their sailors came alongside to barter for your merchandise.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Ezekiel delivers a prophetic oracle against Tyre, cataloging the foreign nations that supplied its fleet and fueled its commercial wealth.
The words — מַחֲזִיקֵ֖י (ma.cha.zi.Kei) denotes the repairers who maintained the vessel, while בִּדְקֵ֑ךְ (bid.Ke/kh) literally identifies the specific leaks they sealed.
The thread — Gebal appears in Joshua 13:5 as a territorial boundary, in Psalms 83:7 among regional powers, and in 1 Kings 5:18 as a source of skilled labor for temple construction.
Why it lands — The text records Tyre's material success as a network of contracted foreign expertise and maritime trade. It demands the reader recognize that commercial prosperity, however extensive, remains a historical reality subject to divine accounting.
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 ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.
Cross-references
- 1 Kings 5:18 So Solomon’s and Hiram’s builders, along with the Gebalites, quarried the stone and prepared the timber and stone for the construction of the temple.
- Joshua 13:5 the land of the Gebalites; and all Lebanon to the east, from Baal-gad below Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath.
- Psalms 83:7 of Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek, of Philistia with the people of Tyre.