Oar

The oar appears in three prophetic passages: once in a vision of Yahweh's secured Jerusalem where no oared galley sails, and twice in the lament for Tyre where oars are part of the ship's furnishing and the rowers are part of the city's loss.

No galley with oars

In Isaiah's vision of the secured city, the river that surrounds Yahweh's people is closed to enemy traffic: "But there Yahweh will be with us in majesty, a place of broad rivers and streams, in which will go no galley with oars, neither will gallant ship pass by it" (Isa 33:21). The oar is the mark of the warship; its absence is the mark of the protection.

Oars of Bashan oak

The lament for Tyre describes the city as a great vessel and details its construction: "Of the oaks of Bashan they have made your oars; they have made your benches of ivory inlaid in cypress-wood, from the isles of Kittim" (Ezek 27:6). The oars are timbered from Bashan, paired with ivory benches and cypress decking from Kittim — every part of the ship sourced from a different region of the Tyrian trade network.

Those who handle the oar

The same oracle later names the rowers among the maritime classes who go ashore to mourn: "And all who handle the oar, the mariners, [and] all the pilots of the sea, will come down from their ships; they will stand on the land" (Ezek 27:29). The oar-handlers stand alongside mariners and pilots — three trades summoned together to grieve the fall of the ship-city.