What Does Ezekiel 27:32 Mean in the King James?
And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?
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 city whose Hebrew name carries the word “rock” is remembered as the one silenced in the sea.
THE MEANING
A name associated with rock does not make a city unbreakable: grandeur can become the very thing people mourn. The mourners fill the air with lament while the city is pictured as silenced in the sea. The verse holds the noise of grief beside the stillness of ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a city’s reputation for strength makes it immune to ruin.
THE ROOT
כַּדֻּמָּה
ka-dummah
GROWS FROM
דמה
damah
To be silent or cease; by extension, to perish or be destroyed.
The word rendered “destroyed” carries the sense of being silenced or brought to an end. The mourners’ wailing makes that silence audible: their voices surround the city that can no longer answer.
ALSO GROWS
damah: To be silent, cease, or perish.
דָּמָה
This root gives the city’s destruction a soundless dimension.
nidmah: Silenced or brought to an end.
נִדְמָה
This form echoes the image of a city left for others to mourn.
צֹר
Tsor
GROWS FROM
צוּר
tsur
Rock or crag.
“Tyrus” in this verse is Tsor. The city’s name shares its three consonants with the Hebrew word for rock. That rock-name gives the city’s fall its sharp edge: apparent solidity becomes another thing swallowed by the sea.
ALSO GROWS
tsur: Rock or cliff.
צוּר
The common noun reveals the rock-image carried by the city’s name.
tsurim: Rocks or cliffs.
צֻרִים
The plural form extends the same rock-image, making the city’s collapse feel like the undoing of something solid.
THE PATTERN
A city’s public grandeur cannot keep its fall from becoming a public lament.
And they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and say to thee, How art thou destroyed, that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants, which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it!The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them.And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!THE THREAD
The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.Tyrus, צֹר (Tsor), shares its consonants with צוּר (tsur), “rock,” the word Psalm 18:2 uses for the LORD. The shared root sets the rock-named city beside a rock named as refuge, opening a contrast between a city silenced in the sea and a steadfast source of shelter.
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