What Does Ezekiel 27:14 Mean?
The house of Togarmah set down horses, riders, and mules 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
They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.THE KEY
The verb translated “traded” carries the sense “they gave,” showing commerce as goods placed into circulation.
THE MEANING
You are shown a city whose reach depends on what distant people bring into its market. Horses, riders, and mules make movement and strength part of the wealth on display. The verb beneath “traded” is “they gave”: these goods are placed into circulation and become part of the city’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a city’s power is self-contained: its display of strength depends on what other peoples supply.
THE ROOT
נָתְנוּ
natnu
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place.
“set down ... in the rows of your wares” in this verse is natnu. The verb behind “traded” is נָתְנוּ (natnu, “they gave”), from נָתַן (natan, “to give, set, place”). Its family includes מַתָּנָה (mattanah, “gift”) and נְתִינִים (netinim, “given ones,” assigned temple servants); the market exchange is voiced as a transfer, with these animals placed into the city’s circulation.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
It keeps the act of giving visible beneath the commercial word “traded.”
netinim: The “given ones,” assigned temple servants.
נְתִינִים
The same root can describe an assignment into another’s keeping, echoing how these animals enter Tyre’s use through exchange.
THE PATTERN
A city’s visible wealth is assembled through exchange with distant peoples, and the market can make living beings part of its inventory.
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.And cinnamon, and fragrances, and incense, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and bodies, and living souls of humankind.THE THREAD
And God said, "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it. It shall be yours for food."Genesis uses the same נתן (natan, “give, place”) root for provision given to sustain life; here, that root describes goods placed into Tyre’s trade. The shared verb opens a distinction within one word: giving can provide directly, or circulate strength through a market.
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