What Does Ezekiel 26:12 Mean in the King James?
And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “pleasant houses” speaks of houses of desire, and the verse shows what is desired reduced to stone, timber, and dust in water.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to a city as its wealth is taken, its walls are broken, and its desired houses are torn down. Even its stones, timber, and dust are put in the water, leaving no layer of its built life untouched. It brings the reader face to face with how exposed what is prized and fortified remains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that wealth, strong walls, and cherished homes can make a city untouchable is undone here: all are exposed to destruction.
THE ROOT
חֶמְדָּתֵךְ
chemdatēkh
GROWS FROM
חמד
ḥ-m-d
Desire, find desirable, or take pleasure in.
The English “pleasant” can sound like an aesthetic note, but חֶמְדָּה (chemdah, desirability or what is desired) carries the sense of something coveted or precious. These are houses invested with desire, and their destruction reaches what the city prizes.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmad: To desire or covet.
חָמַד
The same root appears in Exodus 20:17 for coveting a neighbor’s house, linking the houses’ desirability to the language of desire.
maḥmād: A desirable or precious thing.
מַחְמָד
This branch names the object of desire; the verse places the desired houses among the things exposed to ruin.
רְכֻלָּתֵךְ
rekullātekh
GROWS FROM
רכל
r-k-l
To go about as a trader, traffic, or peddle goods.
The word for merchandise grows from a root for going about as a trader, so commerce is movement and circulation, not merely stored wealth. The same consonants form רָכִיל (rākîl, talebearer), one who circulates reports, extending the root’s field from goods passed between people to words passed between them.
ALSO GROWS
rōkhēl: A merchant, trader, or peddler.
רֹכֵל
This is the person who goes about trading, making the verse’s “merchandise” part of a circulating economy.
rākîl: A talebearer, one who circulates reports.
רָכִיל
The shared root carries the image of going about and passing things along, here widening from trade in goods to traffic in words.
THE PATTERN
The fall of a fortified city exposes wealth and architecture as things that can be taken apart, carried away, or abandoned.
Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin.And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the LORD.And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:THE THREAD
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.Ezekiel’s חֶמְדָּה (chemdah, desirability or what is desired) shares its root with תַחְמֹד (taḥmōd, “you shall covet”) in this verse. The shared root lets the reader hear these as houses desired and treasured, while Ezekiel shows those very houses exposed to destruction.
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