Ezekiel 27:6

27:6 They made your oars from oaks of Bashan;

they made your deck ¹  with cypresses ²  from the Kittean isles. ³ 

Ezekiel 27:15

27:15 The Dedanites ⁴  were your clients. Many coastlands were your customers; they paid ⁵  you with ivory tusks and ebony.

Ezekiel 18:2

18:2 “What do you mean by quoting this proverb concerning the land of Israel,

“‘The fathers eat sour grapes

And the children’s teeth become numb?’ ⁶ 

[27:6]  ¹ tn Or “hull.”

[27:6]  ² tc The Hebrew reads “Your deck they made ivory, daughter of Assyria.” The syntactically difficult “ivory” is understood here as dittography and omitted, though some construe this to refer to ivory inlays. “Daughter of Assyria” is understood here as improper word division and the vowels repointed as “cypresses.”

[27:6]  ³ tn Heb “from the coastlands (or islands) of Kittim,” generally understood to be a reference to the island of Cyprus, where the Phoenicians had a trading colony on the southeast coast. Many modern English versions have “Cyprus” (CEV, TEV), “the coastlands of Cyprus” (NASB), “the coasts of Cyprus” (NIV, NRSV), or “the southern coasts of Cyprus” (NLT).

[27:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “sons of Dedan.”

[27:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “they returned as your gift.”

[18:2]  ⁷ tn This word only occurs here and in the parallel passage in Jer 31:29-30 in the Qal stem and in Eccl 10:10 in the Piel stem. In the latter passage it refers to the bluntness of an ax that has not been sharpened. Here the idea is of the “bluntness” of the teeth, not from having ground them down due to the bitter taste of sour grapes but to the fact that they have lost their “edge,” “bite,” or “sharpness” because they are numb from the sour taste. For this meaning for the word, see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:197.