What Does Ezekiel 26:9 Mean in the King James?

And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.

Ezekiel 26:9 · KJV

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 verb translated “break down” also names breaking through a boundary, so the scene becomes a breach worked into the city’s defenses.

THE MEANING

You see how a breach is made: engines press against the wall while axes take the towers down, carrying the attack from the city’s boundary to its height. The verse holds the violence plainly: these defenses are being broken open.

THE ROOT

יַהֲרֹס

yaharos

GROWS FROM

הרס

haras

To tear down, break through, or demolish.

“break” in this verse is yaharos. This root can describe breaking through a boundary as well as demolishing what stands above it. The attack works as a breach in the city’s defenses: pressure at the wall, then the tower brought down.

ALSO GROWS

yehersu: They break through.

יֶהֶרְסוּ

Exodus 19:21 uses this form for people breaking through a boundary, showing the root’s sense of breaching.

meharesayikh: Your destroyers.

מְהָרְסַיִךְ

Isaiah 49:17 uses the same root for destroyers; here the verb names what the attack does to the towers.

מִגְדָּלָיִךְ

migdalayikh

GROWS FROM

גדל

gadal

To grow, become great, or be great.

“towers” in this verse is migdalayikh. The Hebrew word for tower belongs to the same family as words for growing and being great. The tower is greatness made visible and vertical, and the axes attack that height directly.

ALSO GROWS

gadal: To grow or become great.

גָּדַל

The verb shares the tower’s root and carries the sense of something rising or increasing.

gadol: Great or large.

גָּדוֹל

The adjective links the tower to greatness, the quality its height makes visible.

THE PATTERN

Scripture depicts fortified boundaries as structures that can be breached and brought down.

And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.

Ezekiel 26:4 · KJVThe walls and towers are both brought down, and the city’s defenses are stripped away.

And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.

2 Chronicles 36:19 · KJVThe attack breaks the city wall and reaches into its central buildings and treasures.

(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

2 Corinthians 10:4 · KJVThe image of strongholds being pulled down carries the language of siege into the collapse of entrenched defenses.

THE THREAD

And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.

Ezekiel 26:4 · KJV

The Hebrew root ⁨הרס⁩ (haras, tear down) also appears in 26:4, where Tyre’s towers are named as the object of demolition. Here verse 9 makes that collapse tactile: the siege engine is set against the wall, then axes strike the towers.

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