What Does Ezekiel 27:32 Mean?
In their wailing they will lift up a lament over you, and keen over you, saying, Who is like Tyre, like the silenced one in the midst of the sea?
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
And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?THE KEY
The city whose Hebrew name carries the word “rock” is remembered as the one silenced in the sea.
THE MEANING
A name associated with rock does not make a city unbreakable: grandeur can become the very thing people mourn. The mourners fill the air with lament while the city is pictured as silenced in the sea. The verse holds the noise of grief beside the stillness of ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a city’s reputation for strength makes it immune to ruin.
THE ROOT
כַּדֻּמָּה
ka-dummah
GROWS FROM
דמה
damah
To be silent or cease; by extension, to perish or be destroyed.
The word rendered “destroyed” carries the sense of being silenced or brought to an end. The mourners’ wailing makes that silence audible: their voices surround the city that can no longer answer.
ALSO GROWS
damah: To be silent, cease, or perish.
דָּמָה
This root gives the city’s destruction a soundless dimension.
nidmah: Silenced or brought to an end.
נִדְמָה
This form echoes the image of a city left for others to mourn.
צֹר
Tsor
GROWS FROM
צוּר
tsur
Rock or crag.
“Tyrus” in this verse is Tsor. The city’s name shares its three consonants with the Hebrew word for rock. That rock-name gives the city’s fall its sharp edge: apparent solidity becomes another thing swallowed by the sea.
ALSO GROWS
tsur: Rock or cliff.
צוּר
The common noun reveals the rock-image carried by the city’s name.
tsurim: Rocks or cliffs.
צֻרִים
The plural form extends the same rock-image, making the city’s collapse feel like the undoing of something solid.
THE PATTERN
A city’s public grandeur cannot keep its fall from becoming a public lament.
They will lift up a lament over you and say to you, How you have perished, you who settle from the seas, praised city that was strong in the sea, she and her settlers, who set their terror upon all who settle in her.The burden of Tyre. Howl, you ships of Tarshish, for it is ravaged, so that there is no house, no entering in; from the land of Chittim it is uncovered to them.And they cried out when they looked upon the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like this great city!THE THREAD
The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I shelter; my shield, and the horn of my deliverance, and my high place.Tyrus, צֹר (Tsor), shares its consonants with צוּר (tsur), “rock,” the word Psalm 18:2 uses for the LORD. The shared root sets the rock-named city beside a rock named as refuge, opening a contrast between a city silenced in the sea and a steadfast source of shelter.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us