What Does Nehemiah 13:16 Mean?
Men of Tyre also settled there, who brought fish, and every kind of ware, and sold on the sabbath to the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.
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
There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish, and all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.THE KEY
The Hebrew names both the goods and the selling from מ־כ־ר (sale), inside שַׁבָּת (Sabbath), whose root carries cessation.
THE MEANING
The market continues on a day whose name carries cessation. The sale reaches Judah’s children within Jerusalem, so the exchange involves more than the merchants who bring the goods.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that Sabbath commerce belongs only to outside traders falls away: the verse names Judah’s children among those receiving the goods.
THE ROOT
שַׁבָּת
shabbat
GROWS FROM
שבת
sh-b-t
To cease, stop, or desist.
English can make Sabbath sound only like the name of a day, while its root carries cessation inside the name. Here, trade continues where the word itself holds the sense of a stop.
ALSO GROWS
shavat: To cease, stop, or desist.
שָׁבַת
This verb makes the cessation within Sabbath explicit: the name of the day and the act of stopping share a root.
shabbaton: A Sabbath rest or complete cessation.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related form carries the same root into a term for a day of rest, deepening the contrast with the ongoing market.
מֶכֶר
mekher
GROWS FROM
מכר
m-k-r
To sell or transfer through a sale.
The Hebrew word translated “ware” is מֶכֶר (mekher, sale or merchandise), while “selling” is מֹכְרִים (mokhrim, selling), from the same root. English separates the stock from the action; Hebrew repeats sale-language against the cessation carried by שבת.
ALSO GROWS
mokhrim: Selling; sellers.
מֹכְרִים
The word translated “selling” repeats the root of “ware,” linking the goods directly to the act of trade.
mimkar: Merchandise; something sold.
מִמְכָּר
This related form also names goods through their relation to a sale, echoing the verse’s repeated commercial language.
THE PATTERN
The Sabbath’s cessation reaches beyond individual labor into the community’s terms of exchange.
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.And if the peoples of the land bring goods or any grain on the sabbath to sell, that we will not buy it from them on the sabbath, or on the set-apart day; and that we would let drop the seventh year, and the burden of every hand.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
And if the peoples of the land bring goods or any grain on the sabbath to sell, that we will not buy it from them on the sabbath, or on the set-apart day; and that we would let drop the seventh year, and the burden of every hand.Both verses use שַׁבָּת (shabbat, Sabbath), while this verse pairs the day with an explicit refusal to buy what is sold. Read together, they show the exchange crossing the boundary through both selling and receiving.
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