to transfer a person or thing to another's possession or control, whether through commercial exchange or as an act of judicial power
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
The root covers the whole domain of relinquishing control: a merchant selling grain, an Israelite selling land under debt pressure, a father selling a daughter into service, or a thief who must be sold to repay his crime. In every commercial use the transfer is transactional and involves an agreed price or the prospect of redemption.
A distinct and theologically weighty use occurs when God is the subject and an enemy power is the recipient. When the text says God "sold" Israel into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim or the Philistines, no payment changes hands; the idiom means God handed Israel over to subjugation as an act of judgment. This same logic underlies Deuteronomy 32:30 and the Isaiah passages where God denies having "sold" the exiles: the language acknowledges the idiom while contesting the idea that the sale was motivated by debt or abandonment.
The reflexive form ("to sell oneself") sharpens the sense of surrender. A person sold to cover a debt is passive; a person who sells himself "to do evil" actively gives himself over to wickedness, placing his own will under a controlling power. The same verb covers both.
Nuances
1ato sell in a commercial or legal transaction: property, goods, or persons exchanged for payment or to satisfy a legal obligation
1bto hand over to an enemy's power, as an act of divine judgment, without commercial exchange; and reflexively, to give oneself over to a controlling power or to wickedness
carries the theological idiom of divine judgment: God "selling" a people means handing them over to oppression, not receiving paymentJdg 2:14
the reflexive form means to surrender oneself to a power or to wickedness, not a commercial act1Ki 21:20
Both
both describe transferring a person or thing from one party's possession to anotherGen 37:28
Only sell
the English word "sell" strongly implies a financial transaction; readers may miss that the Hebrew verb can describe a non-monetary act of judicial handing over
“hand over”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“give over”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How makhar differs from similar Hebrew words
נתןgive or hand over without the commercial frame; the overlap is in the theological "hand over to an enemy" use, where the two verbs are nearly interchangeable
It is the ordinary word for selling a PERSON, handing someone over into slavery or servitude for a price.Gen 37:27Gen 37:28Exo 21:7Deu 24:7
It carries the theological picture of God selling his own people, giving Israel up into the hand of enemies as punishment.Jdg 2:14Jdg 3:8Jdg 4:2Deu 32:30
It governs the sale of land and property under the jubilee laws, where a field or house passes to a buyer and can later be redeemed.Lev 25:14Lev 25:23Lev 25:25
Both
Both can name the act of selling, transferring goods to another person for payment.Gen 47:20Amo 8:5
It is specific to the grain trade, the word for dealing in food and provisions, and clusters around the famine when people came to Egypt for grain.Gen 41:56Gen 41:57Gen 42:3Amo 8:5
It can mean to BUY, to acquire food by purchase, a sense the other word never carries.Gen 42:2Deu 2:6Isa 55:1
makhar in the other biblical languages
πωλέωGreek“to sell”the ordinary Greek word for commercial sale in the New Testament, the closest semantic parallel to the literal selling sense
used with God as the subject, who sells his people by handing them over into the power of their enemies as an act of judgmentJdg 2:14Jdg 3:8Deu 32:301Sa 12:9
regularly names the selling of a human being into servitude or slaveryGen 37:28Exo 21:7Deu 24:7
Both
both are the ordinary commercial verb for a sale, goods or property exchanged for money in everyday trade (the Old Testament word is the one the New Testament verb regularly stands in for)Lev 25:14Luk 17:28
both are used for selling land and real propertyGen 47:20Act 4:37
carries Jesus' call of discipleship: sell your possessions and give to the poor in order to follow himMat 19:21Mrk 10:21Luk 18:22Luk 12:33
used for the small-scale market trade of the Gospels, down to two sparrows sold for a penny, and the doves sold in the templeMat 10:29Luk 12:6Mat 21:12
παραδίδωμιGreek“to deliver”to hand over or deliver into another's power, the Greek verb that most closely captures the theological "handed over to enemies" idiom, including the betrayal of Jesus
Only the Hebrew word has God as the seller: when Israel turns away, the LORD "sells" his people into an enemy's hand, treating them as goods handed over to a new master. This is a settled way of describing his judgment, and the Greek word is never used of God selling anyone.Jdg 2:14Jdg 3:8Psa 44:12
The Hebrew word is a legal term with rules attached, because Israel's law limits what may be sold and for how long: land cannot pass away permanently, a person sold into service has a release date, and stealing a man to sell him carries the death penalty.Lev 25:23Deu 15:12Exo 21:16
The Hebrew word covers the everyday market: a woman selling the cloth she has made, traders bringing fish and produce into the city, a widow told to sell her oil and live on the rest.Pro 31:24Neh 13:162Ki 4:7
The Hebrew word can make a person his own seller: Ahab "sold himself" to do evil, giving himself over to wickedness by his own act. That is the opposite of the Greek picture, where the one sold is never the one doing the selling.1Ki 21:202Ki 17:17
Both
Both are the plain, ordinary word for a sale of property: a field or a piece of land passes to a new owner for money. πιπράσκω is the everyday Greek verb standing where מָכַר stands in Hebrew, so the same transaction told in either language uses these two words.Rut 4:3Act 5:4
Both are used of selling human beings, so that a person is priced and handed over like property: Joseph sold by his brothers to passing traders, and a debtor ordered sold along with his wife and children.Gen 37:28Mat 18:25
Both name a sale forced by debt, where goods or even the debtor himself are turned into money to settle what is owed.2Ki 4:7Mat 18:25
Only the Greek word turns the sale into a picture of a person's condition: Paul says he is "sold under sin", so the person is the thing that changed hands and now belongs to a power over him, with no seller named at all.Rom 7:14
In the Greek the interesting question is usually what the money is FOR rather than what the seller gains: possessions and land are sold so the proceeds can be handed to the poor or pooled with the believing community.Act 2:45Jhn 12:5
The Greek word also carries glad renunciation: a man sells everything he owns because he has found one thing worth more than all of it.Mat 13:46
What scholars say about makhar
The root מכר covers both commercial sale and the theological idiom of God delivering Israel into enemy hands. HALOT distinguishes the commercial qal ("to sell") from the theological usage but treats them as one root, noting the idiom is concentrated in the Deuteronomistic History (Judges, Samuel) and shaped by covenant theology: being "sold" is the judicial consequence of breaking the covenant. BDB similarly catalogs the uses under one entry but flags the theological sense (pp. 569-570) as a distinct coloring of the verb when God is the subject. TWOT (entry 1036) notes that the idiom reflects Israel's understanding of history as controlled by divine judgment, not chance. The reflexive hithpael ("to sell oneself to do evil") is treated by HALOT as a late usage, appearing in the narrative evaluation of Ahab (1 Kings 21) and the summaries of northern Israel's apostasy (2 Kings 17).