What Does Ezekiel 27:28 Mean?
At the sound of the outcry of your helmsmen, the pastures quake.
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 suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots.THE KEY
The “suburbs” here are open common grounds beyond a settlement, and even those outer spaces tremble at the pilots’ cry.
THE MEANING
The cry of those steering through ruin reaches beyond the vessel: the open ground around it trembles at the sound. Distress travels outward, registering in the world around its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what breaks among those steering can be contained there; even the surrounding ground trembles.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשׁוֹת
migrashot
GROWS FROM
גרש
garash
Drive out, expel, thrust away.
“pastures” in this verse is migrashot. מִגְרָשׁוֹת (migrashot) means open common ground outside a settlement, rather than modern residential suburbs. Linked to גָּרַשׁ (garash, “drive out”), the word gives the trembling outskirts an echo of land set beyond the inhabited center.
ALSO GROWS
garash: Drive out, expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This verb shares the consonants associated with migrash, giving the open land beyond the settlement an echo of being driven outward.
migrash: Open common land or pasture outside a settlement.
מִגְרָשׁ
This singular form clarifies that the places trembling are the settlement’s outer grounds, where the pilots’ cry reaches beyond the vessel.
יִרְעֲשׁוּ
yir'ashu
GROWS FROM
רעש
ra'ash
Quake, tremble, make a commotion.
This verb shares its root with the Hebrew noun for an earthquake or commotion, so the suburbs do not merely seem unsettled: the verse evokes a land-quake. The pilots’ cry becomes something the surrounding ground physically registers.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ash: Earthquake, shaking, commotion.
רַעַשׁ
The noun names the kind of disturbance expressed by the verb: the land’s trembling is a quake-like commotion.
ra'ash: Quake or tremble.
רָעַשׁ
This verbal form appears in Haggai’s image of heaven, earth, sea, and dry land shaking, extending the same root beyond these outskirts.
THE PATTERN
A disturbance at its source travels outward until the surrounding ground and structures register it.
The voice of the LORD makes the wilderness writhe; the LORD makes the wilderness of Kadesh writhe.And suddenly there came a great shaking, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and at once all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were untied.THE THREAD
For thus says the LORD of hosts. Yet once more, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry ground.Ezekiel’s verb for “shake” and Haggai’s “I will shake” share the root רעש (ra’ash, “quake”). Haggai carries the same trembling through heaven, earth, sea, and dry land, widening the scene from the pilots’ outskirts to the whole created landscape.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us