What Does Ezekiel 27:6 Mean?
From the oaks of Bashan they made your oars, and the people of Asshur made your benches of ivory from the coastlands of Chittim.
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
Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim.THE KEY
The word for “oars” belongs to a Hebrew root of roaming, so the ship’s means of motion carries the idea of ranging across distance within its name.
THE MEANING
A ship can appear as one powerful thing while its oars, benches, and materials come from different places: Bashan’s oaks become its oars, Ashurite makers shape its benches, and ivory comes from the isles of Chittim. Its movement and its splendor are assembled from land, skilled hands, and distant sources. What looks self-contained is held together by many origins.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The ship’s power and luxury are self-made. The verse shows them assembled from materials and labor beyond the ship itself.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁטוֹתַיִךְ
mishtotayikh
GROWS FROM
שׁוּט
shut
to roam, range, or go to and fro; in a nautical form, to row
“oars” in this verse is mishtotayikh. English gives the oar a purely mechanical name, while Hebrew places it in a word family of roaming and going to and fro. The ship’s means of travel thus carries the idea of ranging over distance within its name.
ALSO GROWS
māšōṭ: An oar, an instrument for rowing
מָשׁוֹט
This is the object named in the verse: the tool that sends the ship across the water.
shut: To range or move about
שׁוּט
Amos 8:12 uses this root for running to and fro across the land; the oar’s motion belongs to the same word family of ranging.
THE PATTERN
What appears as one powerful vessel or city is assembled from materials, skilled work, and goods gathered across distance.
Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; make nests in the ark, and cover it within and without with pitch.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.The cargo of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all citron wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel of the most precious wood, and bronze, and iron, and marble.THE THREAD
And they shall stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and they shall not find it.The word translated “oars” is מִשְׁטוֹתַיִךְ (mishtotayikh), from שׁוּט (shut), a root for ranging or going to and fro. Amos uses the same root for those who “run to and fro”; here that ranging is built into a ship’s equipment, while Amos makes it a search across the land.
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