What Does Ezekiel 27:23 Mean in the King James?
Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
What looks like Tyre’s wealth is really a circuit: the Hebrew for “merchants” carries the motion of going around.
THE MEANING
The city’s abundance arrives through a web of distant places, so its apparent self-sufficiency rests on people and routes beyond its borders. The named merchants show how prosperity depends on exchange, and how much is tied together through it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“My abundance comes from me alone” is the false belief this verse unsettles; even great wealth depends on connections beyond its source.
THE ROOT
סֹחֲרִים
soḥarim
GROWS FROM
סחר
s-ḥ-r
To go around or travel about; by extension, to trade.
“merchants” in this verse is soḥarim. The word carries movement inside commerce: a merchant travels a circuit, connecting places through exchange. The verse’s list is more than a roll of names, it reveals the network circulating the city’s wealth.
ALSO GROWS
soḥer: Merchant or trader
סוֹחֵר
The singular form keeps the same sense of a person moving through the circuit of exchange.
seḥorah: Merchandise or trade
סְחֹרָה
This branch names what circulates through the merchant network, linking movement with the goods it carries.
עֵדֶן
ʿēden
GROWS FROM
עדן
ʿ-d-n
Delight, pleasure, or luxuriance.
Eden’s name carries the shade of delight into this list of trading places. The verse lets abundance appear as both geography and appetite: wealth is a network that moves desirable things.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēden: Delight, pleasure; Eden
עֵדֶן
The place-name carries an association with delight within the merchant list.
maʿadannim: Delicacies or dainties
מַעֲדַנִּים
This related form shows the root’s connection to things enjoyed as refined abundance.
THE PATTERN
A city’s abundance is assembled through far-reaching exchange and remains dependent on the routes that sustain it.
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.She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:THE THREAD
Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.The same Hebrew word for merchants appears when Joseph is sold and carried into Egypt. Here the merchant circuit carries wealth; there it carries a human life toward constriction, showing that exchange moves people and consequences as surely as goods.
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