What Does Ezekiel 29:18 Mean?
Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon made his army serve a great labor against Tyre. Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled. Yet neither he nor his army had wages from Tyre, for the labor that he served against it.
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
Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it:THE KEY
The army’s unpaid service does not disappear: the next verse names another conquered land as its wages.
THE MEANING
This verse places Nebuchadrezzar’s army’s service against Tyre beside its physical toll, bald heads and peeled shoulders, and its missing wages. It keeps the cost of demanded labor visible in the same account as the work, even when payment is absent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that great effort automatically receives its due: even a “great service” can leave the worker unpaid.
THE ROOT
הֶעֱבִיד
heʿevid
GROWS FROM
עבד
Work or serve.
“made his army serve” in this verse is heʿevid. The Hebrew verb means “caused to work”: it is a causative form of the same root behind “service” and “served” later in the verse. The repeated root binds the army’s forced labor, its bodily cost, and its unpaid service into one account.
ALSO GROWS
avodah: Labor, work, or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This is the “service” called great in the verse, from the same root as the work the army is made to perform.
avad: To work or serve.
עָבַד
This is the root’s basic verb, echoed when the verse names the service the army has carried out against Tyre.
שָׂכָר
sakhar
GROWS FROM
שכר
Hire, wages, or payment for work.
“wages” in this verse is sakhar. The verse sets great service beside the absence of hire: the work is fully named, while its payment is missing. Related forms connect the wage to the hired worker, keeping labor and compensation within one field of meaning.
ALSO GROWS
sakhir: A hired worker.
שָׂכִיר
This form names the person whose work is bound to payment, making the army’s unpaid service concrete.
sakhar: To hire or engage for wages.
שָׂכַר
This verb shows the payment word’s connection to hiring and work, sharpening the force of “no wages.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps labor and its payment in the same moral account, making unpaid work visible rather than incidental.
On his day you give him his wage, and the sun does not go down upon it, for he is bowed down and carries his living soul toward it. Lest he call out against you to the LORD, and it be missing in you.Woe to the one who builds his house out of alignment, and his upper rooms without judgment, who makes his neighbor serve for nothing, and does not give him the wage of his work.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD. Look, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall carry away her multitude, and plunder her spoil, and plunder her prey, and it shall be wages for his army.The next verse answers the absence of wages by naming Egypt as payment for the army. That payment comes through taking the land, its multitude, spoil, and prey, so the compensation continues the violence.
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