What Does Ezekiel 29:18 Mean in the King James?
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 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 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.
“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.
At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the 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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