What Does Ezekiel 27:25 Mean?
The ships of Tarshish sang of you in your market, and you were filled and made very weighty in the heart of the seas.
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
The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.THE KEY
The Hebrew word rendered “glorious” comes from the root for weight: here, splendor is the weight of everything gathered into fullness.
THE MEANING
You can be filled through what travels toward you, your abundance carried by a web of exchange beyond yourself. The verse places that fullness in the midst of the seas, within the currents that sustain it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that fullness is self-contained: what gathers around you also arrives through connections beyond you.
THE ROOT
וַתִּכְבְּדִי
vattikhbedi
GROWS FROM
כבד
כבד (k-b-d): to be heavy or weighty, to carry weight.
“very weighty” in this verse is vattikhbedi. The word translated “glorious” comes from כבד, the root of weight and heaviness. Splendor here has substance: the fullness Tyre receives becomes weight, prominence, and felt importance in the midst of the seas.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight, honor, glory
כָּבוֹד
It shows that glory carries the sense of weight or significance, not merely appearance.
kaved: Heavy, weighty
כָּבֵד
It makes the verse’s hidden image plain: to be glorious is to have weight.
kibbed: Honored, treated as weighty
כִּבֵּד
It links weight with the honor given to what is regarded as significant.
וַתִּמָּלְאִי
vattimmale'i
GROWS FROM
מלא
מלא (m-l-ʾ): to be full, to fill.
The word translated “replenished” is the language of being filled. Its root also appears in words for fullness and filling, so the verse holds together both the act of filling and the full state that follows.
ALSO GROWS
male: Full; to be full
מָלֵא
It names the state Tyre enters as the ships and their trade fill the city.
mille: Filled, made full
מִלֵּא
It highlights the movement from receiving what arrives to becoming full.
melo: Fullness
מְלֹא
It gives the verse’s replenishment a broader sense: a fullness gathered from what flows in.
THE PATTERN
Visible fullness is carried by a wider network of exchange and provision.
For the king had ships of Tarshish at sea with the ships of Hiram. Once in three years came the ships of Tarshish, carrying gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you make them all; the earth is full of your possessions.Yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving you rain from heaven and seasons that bear fruit, filling your hearts with food and gladness.THE THREAD
How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you make them all; the earth is full of your possessions.The same root מלא (male, to be full or fill) appears in both verses. Ezekiel shows a city filled through what travels by sea; the Psalm widens the image to the whole earth filled with riches.
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