What Does Ezekiel 27:12 Mean?
Tarshish was your trader for the abundance of all wealth; silver, iron, tin, and lead they set down in the rows of your wares.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “traded” says “they gave”: the verse reveals wealth moving from hand to hand.
THE MEANING
Here, wealth is relational: silver, iron, tin, and lead become value as they are carried, given, and received. A city’s riches take shape through a network of people and places exchanging what they have.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the picture of wealth as self-contained possession: what a city calls its riches has passed through other hands.
THE ROOT
נָתְנוּ
natenu
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
to give, put, or place
“set down” in this verse is natenu. The Hebrew verb behind “traded” is natan, “they gave.” The KJV names the commercial act, while the Hebrew lets you see its movement through giving: the goods change hands, and wealth moves with them.
ALSO GROWS
natan: to give, set, or place
נָתַן
This root keeps the act of exchange connected to the giving of goods.
mattanah: gift
מַתָּנָה
The gift is another form of what is given, illuminating the giving held within the trade.
סֹחֵר
sōḥēr
GROWS FROM
סחר
s-ḥ-r
to go about; by extension, to trade
“trader” in this verse is sōḥēr. The merchant’s root joins going about with trade. Its branches keep commerce tied to circulation: the merchant moves among people, and merchandise moves with them. The metals in this verse are therefore part of a flow, not merely an inventory.
ALSO GROWS
sachar: trade or commerce
סַחַר
This names the activity that carries the listed metals between people.
sechorah: merchandise or goods for trade
סְחֹרָה
The goods themselves share the merchant’s root, joining the trader and the traded things in one word family.
THE PATTERN
Wealth becomes visible through the goods that move between people and places.
Then Midianite traders passed by, and they drew him up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, and they brought Joseph into Egypt.For the king had ships of Tarshish at sea with the ships of Hiram. Once in three years came the ships of Tarshish, carrying gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.The cargo of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all citron wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel of the most precious wood, and bronze, and iron, and marble.THE THREAD
These were your traders in every finished thing, in blue garments and color-woven cloth, and in chests of rich apparel bound with cords and made of cedar, among your trade.The same Hebrew root for “merchant” appears again, expanding the single Tarshish connection into a wider web of traders and wares. The metals in verse 12 are one part of the circulation this verse describes.
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