StrongerBible

ma'arav

מַעֲרָב

HebrewH4627merchandise, wares, ...

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ezk 27:9Ezk 27:13Ezk 27:17Ezk 27:19Ezk 27:25Ezk 27:27 (2×)Ezk 27:33Ezk 27:34
Root family
Word studymah-ah-RAHVnoun

What ma'arav means

exchange goods: the wares that change hands when traders barter with one another

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is a trader's word, and it lives in one chapter of the Bible. All eight verses that use it sit inside Ezekiel 27, the long funeral song for the port city of Tyre, and every time it appears it carries the ending "your": these are Tyre's exchange goods. It is built on a Hebrew verb meaning "to exchange" or "to stand surety" for someone, so the noun is not simply "stuff for sale". It names the goods that move in a two way deal.

Ezekiel points the word in both directions at once, which is why English versions of the same verse can look so different. When Javan, Tubal and Meshech "gave your wares" in Ezekiel 27:13, some translators hear the nations paying Tyre for its goods and others hear them stocking Tyre's warehouses. The Hebrew word sits in the middle of the transaction and does not settle which side is which, and that is close to the poem's point: Tyre is the hinge where the whole world's goods change hands.

The song then turns the word against the city. The same wares that made Tyre rich, spread across the decks of the ships of Tarshish in Ezekiel 27:25, are listed among the things that sink in Ezekiel 27:27 and named again in the wreckage in Ezekiel 27:34. Ezekiel is not describing a marketplace but a ship, and the cargo that made her heavy is what drags her down.

Ezekiel's poems against Tyre stack several trade words on top of each other, and this is the one that names the swap itself:

  • the goods a partner delivers into the market (עִזָּבוֹן), a word found only in this same chapter
  • the traveling trader's traffic and the stock he carries with him (רְכֻלָּה), used of Tyre in the chapters on either side
  • and this word, the wares that pass from hand to hand in the bargain
Ezk 27:9Ezk 27:13Ezk 27:17Ezk 27:19Ezk 27:25Ezk 27:27 (2×)Ezk 27:33Ezk 27:34

What scholars say about ma'arav

The lexica agree on the sense: מַעֲרָב is a noun from the root ערב "to exchange, give in pledge," denoting articles of exchange, exchange-goods, wares (BDB; HALOT; DCH). It is confined to the Tyre lament of Ezekiel 27, where it stands within a dense cluster of commercial terms alongside עִזָּבוֹן, itself unique to that chapter. The precise technical force of each term is not settled: whether עִזָּבוֹן names goods delivered as payment while מַעֲרָב names the exchange-stock, or the reverse, remains debated, and the syntax of נָתְנוּ מַעֲרָבֵךְ in verses 13 and 17 leaves the direction of the transaction open. Greenberg (Anchor Bible) and Block (NICOT) read the chapter's trade vocabulary as deliberately technical Phoenician commercial usage rather than ordinary Hebrew, which accounts for its concentration here; Zimmerli (Hermeneia) notes the difficulty of assigning each term a distinct commercial function. The homograph מַעֲרָב "west" (H4628), from the separate root meaning "to grow dark," is a different word and is carried under its own number.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. מַעֲרָבlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. מַעֲרָבlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. מַעֲרָבlexicon
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible 22A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), on Ezekiel 27commentary
  • Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), on Ezekiel 27commentary
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), on Ezekiel 27commentary

All attested forms of מַעֲרָב

m s construct

מַעֲרָבֵךְ

Ezk 27:9, Ezk 27:13, Ezk 27:17, Ezk 27:19, Ezk 27:25, Ezk 27:27, Ezk 27:27, Ezk 27:34

m p construct

מַעֲרָבַיִךְ

Ezk 27:33