What Does Ezekiel 26:19 Mean in the King James?
For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;
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 waters do not merely surround the city; they cover a place until its human life and visibility are gone.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you in the image of a city made desolate and then covered: the place where people live is left empty as the deep rises over it. The force is not partial damage but engulfment, with the city hidden beneath great waters.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a place remains secure simply because it is built and inhabited is undone here: even a city can be made desolate and covered by the deep.
THE ROOT
וְכִסּוּךְ
vekhissukh
GROWS FROM
כסה
כסה (kasah): to cover, conceal, or spread over.
“cover thee” in this verse is vekhissukh. The verb presents the city as the object of an enveloping action: the waters close over it until its surface and habitation are hidden. The same root describes the flood covering the hills, making “cover” here total engulfment, not a thin layer.
ALSO GROWS
kissah: he covered
כִּסָּה
This verb form names the covering action that overtakes the city in the verse.
mekhuséh: covered
מְכֻסֶּה
This form names the state produced by the action: what was exposed is now hidden beneath a covering.
mikhseh: covering
מִכְסֶה
The root can also name the covering itself, turning an action into the thing that hides what lies beneath.
נֶחֱרֶבֶת
neḥerevet
GROWS FROM
חרב
חרב (ḥ-r-b): to dry up, become waste, or be laid desolate.
“desolate” in this verse is neḥerevet. This word marks the city as ruined before the image of rising water arrives. Its root also carries the sense of drying up, so desolation and engulfment meet in the verse: the city is emptied of life and then covered.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēv: dry, laid waste
חָרֵב
The related adjective shows how the root carries both physical barrenness and ruin.
ḥorbāh: waste, desolation
חָרְבָּה
This noun makes the ruined condition explicit: the city becomes a place emptied of settled life.
נוֹשָׁבוּ
noshavu
GROWS FROM
ישב
ישב (yashav): to sit, remain, or dwell.
“not inhabited” in this verse is noshavu. The comparison is to cities where no one sits or dwells; “uninhabited” is not abstract emptiness but the loss of settled human presence. The root’s ordinary sense of sitting makes that absence concrete.
ALSO GROWS
yashav: to sit, settle, or dwell
יָשַׁב
This is the basic verb behind the verse’s description of places without inhabitants.
yoshev: one who sits or dwells
יוֹשֵׁב
This form makes the missing presence visible: a city without dwellers has no one who sits within it.
THE PATTERN
When waters rise beyond their bounds, places that seemed fixed can be rendered uninhabited and covered.
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.THE THREAD
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.The Hebrew verb for “covered” in Genesis comes from the same root, כסה (kasah), as “cover thee” in Ezekiel. Genesis shows that covering reaching the highest hills; Ezekiel brings that same total engulfment upon a city.
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