What Does Ezekiel 26:5 Mean?
It will be a spreading ground for nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, declares the Lord GOD, and it will be plunder for the nations.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD: and it shall become a spoil to the nations.THE KEY
The rock named Tyre is reduced to a surface others use, showing that power can end not only in defeat but in exposure and appropriation.
THE MEANING
Read now, the line confronts the assumption that what is fortified and prosperous is beyond reach: the city’s surface is exposed for nets, and its substance becomes property claimed by other nations. The words keep the violence concrete, what belonged to one is made available to others. “I have spoken it” presents the reversal as settled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strength and wealth guarantee lasting control over a place’s future.
THE ROOT
מִשְׂטוֹחַ
mishtoaḥ
GROWS FROM
שטח
to spread out or stretch flat
“a spreading ground for nets” in this verse is mishtoaḥ. The root turns “place” from an abstract location into a surface prepared for nets. In the surrounding passage, Tyre’s name (צֹר, Tzor, rock) meets its counterimage: the rock-city is rendered open ground.
ALSO GROWS
shatach: to spread or stretch flat
שָׁטַח
It supplies the action behind the nets spread across the city’s new surface.
mishtach: a flat expanse or spread surface
מִשְׁטָח
It echoes the place the city becomes: ground made available for another use.
דִּבַּרְתִּי
dibarti
GROWS FROM
דבר
to speak; as a noun, word or matter
The same root forms speech and davar, a word, matter, or thing. The spoken judgment and the concrete outcome stand in one field: the word is bound to what now takes shape.
ALSO GROWS
davar: word, matter, or thing
דָּבָר
It shows how speech and the resulting condition share the same root.
dibber: spoke or declared
דִּבֵּר
It is the verbal form echoed in “I have spoken it.”
לְבַז
levaz
GROWS FROM
בזז
to plunder or seize as spoil
“plunder” in this verse is levaz. The city does not merely fall; it becomes something others can seize. The root gives the reversal a tangible shape: what was held becomes loot.
ALSO GROWS
baz: spoil or booty
בַּז
It names what the city itself becomes.
bazaz: to plunder or seize
בָּזַז
It gives the action behind the transfer of the city’s wealth and control.
THE PATTERN
A power that once seemed world-shaping can become a visible ruin whose wealth is exposed to others.
Those who see you will peer at you and discern you, saying, Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?How is the hammer of the whole earth cut in two and broken! How has Babylon become emptied among the nations!For in one hour such great wealth has been emptied. And every steersman, and every one who sails to a place, and sailors, and as many as work the sea, stood far off.THE THREAD
I will send him against a soiled nation, and against the people of my overflow I will charge him, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to trample them like the mire of the streets.Isaiah uses the same root, בזז, for taking spoil; Ezekiel makes the city itself the spoil. The shared root makes the reversal concrete: the place is no longer held, but seized.
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