hon

This is the everyday word for what a person owns and has piled up: money, property, valuables, and tradeable goods. More than half of its appearances are in Proverbs, where it names wealth in the plainest sense and then weighs it. Wealth builds a person a kind of walled city they feel safe behind (Proverbs 10:15; 18:11), yet the same book insists it cannot buy off death or wrath and is worth less than righteousness and wisdom (Proverbs 8:18; 11:4).

The word stretches from abstract riches to very concrete goods. In the song over Tyre it means the merchandise and stockpiled wealth of a trading empire, the cargo that made the city rich and that sinks with it (Ezekiel 27:12, 27, 33). It can also stand for the whole worth of a household, the sum a person might hand over as restitution or offer for something priceless (Proverbs 6:31; Song of Songs 8:7).

Proverbs never treats wealth as automatically good or bad. It is honest gain when it comes through work and wisdom, and a snare when it is chased greedily or hoarded through cheating (Proverbs 13:11; 28:8; 28:22). The word itself stays neutral; the surrounding saying supplies the verdict.

In one short poem the same word works not as a noun for riches but as an exclamation meaning "Enough!" The wise saying lists things that never reach their fill: the grave, a childless womb, parched land, and fire, none of which ever says "Enough!" (Proverbs 30:15, 16).

The standard lexicons connect this use to the idea of sufficiency that also underlies the word for wealth, since to be wealthy is to have more than enough. Here that idea is turned into a spoken word, the point at which a craving would finally be met, and the poem's grim joke is that these appetites never speak it.