Although some translations of Ezekiel 27:19 name Izal and its wine, others read “Vedan and Javan from Uzal” (NRSV) or “Greeks from Uzal” (NLT) instead of mentioning wine. This stems from a difference between the surviving Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. This biblical text was originally written in Hebrew. However, the earliest Hebrew manuscript with Ezekiel 27:19 is the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus (or the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets), dated to 916 C.E.
The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, dates to the third or second century B.C.E. Whereas the Hebrew reads wedan weyawan me’uzzal (“and Dan and Javan that which is spun”), the Septuagint reads kai oinon eis ten agoran sou edokan ex Asel (“and they traded wine from Izal in your marketplace”). With the Septuagint’s testimony, biblical scholars have reconstructed the Hebrew text of Ezekiel 27:19 to read wdny yyn m’yzl (“casks of wine from Izal”).1
