to do business as a traveling trader, buying and selling goods; (as a participle) a merchant
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The everyday picture behind this word is a trader on the move. To "trade" here is to travel into a place and do business there, buying and selling goods (Genesis 34:10). Most often the word appears as a name for the person who does this: the merchant or trader who ranges from town to town, or by sea, to make a living.
This is the word for the great commercial players of the ancient world: the king's merchants who bought horses out of Egypt (1 Kings 10:28), and above all the traders who made Tyre rich, buying and selling across the whole known world (Ezekiel 27). It can name a household's enterprise too, likening the capable woman to "the merchant ships" that bring food from far away (Proverbs 31:14).
A near neighbor is the peddler (רָכַל), who hawks smaller wares from place to place; this word leans toward the larger-scale merchant and the general activity of doing business. The Greek of the New Testament reaches for the same image with its verb for traveling to trade (ἐμπορεύομαι).
Nuances
1ato trade or do business in a place, buying and selling goods
Gen 34:10Gen 34:21Gen 42:34
1ba merchant: one who travels from place to place to buy and sell
to move restlessly about; (of the heart) to pound or throb
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
Underneath the commercial word lies a plainer, more physical idea: to move restlessly about. This older sense survives in a few places. In Jeremiah 14:18 the prophets and priests "go about" a land they do not know, ranging through it without direction.
The same restless movement describes the body under strain. In Psalm 38:10 the sufferer says his heart "goes round and round," which is to say it pounds and throbs with anxiety. The word paints the racing heart as something that will not hold still, circling and circling inside him.
Nuances
2ato go about or range through a land
Jer 14:18*
2bof the heart: to pound or throb, going round and round
pictures a trader who ranges from place to place by land or sea, as with the seagoing traders who supplied TyreEzk 27:12
names a group passing through on the move, like the caravan of traders who carried Joseph down to EgyptGen 37:28
Both
both name someone whose work is buying and selling goods for profit1Ki 10:28
Only merchant
the English word "merchant" can suggest a settled shopkeeper with a fixed stall, an image the original does not require
“trade”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“throb”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How saḥar differs from similar Hebrew words
רָכַלthe traveling peddler who hawks goods from place to place, often spices and small wares, where this word is the broader merchant who trades and does business, frequently on a larger scale
מָכַרspecifically to sell, handing something over for a price, where this word is the wider activity of trading and doing business, both buying and selling
כְּנַעֲנִיthe word "Canaanite" that came to mean a trader, tied to the trading peoples of Canaan, where this word is the ordinary verb for trading and a merchant of any nation
The plain, neutral word for a merchant with no ethnic label attached: simply anyone who buys goods in order to sell them.Gen 23:16Gen 42:34
Pictures the merchant as one who TRAVELS about, carrying wares from land to land, whether the roving caravan or the great trading houses of Tyre.Gen 37:28Ezk 27:12
The underlying idea is roaming or going around, and the word can describe restless movement even where no commerce is in view, such as a heart that will not settle or priests wandering through a land.Psa 38:10Jer 14:18
Both
Both are ordinary Hebrew words for a "merchant," and either can be carried over by that one English word.Pro 31:24Gen 23:16
Both belong to the world of buying and selling for profit, and Proverbs 31 sets them side by side: the good wife is like the trading ships that bring food from afar, and she sells her wares to the merchant.Pro 31:14Pro 31:24
First and foremost an ethnic and national name: the Canaanite people whose land Israel was promised and told to dispossess.Gen 15:21Deu 7:1Jos 3:10
When it means "merchant," the trade sense is inseparable from that Canaanite (Phoenician) identity: a person of this people was called a trader because his nation were the great traders of the ancient world.Job 41:6Pro 31:24
Carries a pointed double edge, so that "no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD" is heard at once as the foreigner and as the profiteer who has no place at the altar.Zec 14:21
It is the plain occupational word, with no nation inside it, so it can be attached to any trader at all: Midianites hauling Joseph to Egypt, a trader of Sidon, Solomon's own buyers, and the far off partners of Sheba, Dedan and Tarshish.Gen 37:28Isa 23:21Ki 10:28Ezk 38:13
It works as an ordinary verb for doing business in a place, so it can be granted or promised as a right of residence: Shechem offers Jacob's sons the run of the land to trade in it, and Joseph offers his brothers the same terms.Gen 34:10Gen 34:21Gen 42:34
It supplies the everyday vocabulary of the market and of long distance shipping: silver weighed out at the rate current with traders, ships that fetch food from far away, and Tyre's partners listed one by one with the goods each supplied.Gen 23:16Pro 31:14Ezk 27:12Ezk 27:16
Underneath the trading sense lies the idea of going round about, and it surfaces where no buying or selling is in view at all: a heart that goes round and round, that is, pounds with distress, and prophet and priest who wander off into a land they do not know.Psa 38:10Jer 14:18
Both
Both can name a merchant, and Isaiah 23:8 sets them side by side of Tyre, whose traders were princes and whose merchants were the honored of the earth. The parallel is the clearest proof that the two words could stand for the same figure.Isa 23:8
Both name the trading class the prophets single out when they announce that a rich city is finished, so either word can carry the charge that commercial wealth is no protection.Zep 1:11Isa 47:15Ezk 27:36
It is first of all a name. It belongs to a man, the son of Ham, and then to the people descended from him, which is something a word for trading can never do.Gen 9:18Gen 10:151Ch 1:8
It is also the standard name of a territory, the land God promises to Abraham and his family and the region Israel enters.Gen 17:8Exo 6:4Num 34:2Psa 105:11
When it does mean "merchant", the trade sense is carried by a people's own name, so the label comes with the sting of an accusation: the coastal Canaanites were the traders of the region, and their name became a byword for the trade. That is why the word can sit beside crooked scales and a love of cheating, and beside the silver counters of Jerusalem whose ruin is announced.Hos 12:7Zep 1:11
Because one word carries both the place and the trade, a phrase can be read either way and translators genuinely split over it: the same words are rendered "the land of Canaan" by some and "a land of traders" by others.Ezk 16:29Ezk 17:4
saḥar in the other biblical languages
ἐμπορεύομαιGreek“to traffic in”the Greek verb for traveling to do business and trade, the closest counterpart to the action of this word
ἔμποροςGreek“trader/merchant”the Greek word for a merchant, matching the "trader" participle that dominates this word's uses
is first of all a verb for the activity itself, moving through a territory to do business, not just a label for the man who does it. Foreigners are told the land is open to them so they can settle and trade in it.Gen 34:10Gen 42:34
keeps a picture of going round and round underneath the commerce, and that picture surfaces where no trading is happening at all: a heart pounding hard in the chest.Psa 38:10
covers ordinary commerce with no moral weight attached at all: silver weighed out at the going rate to buy a burial field, a caravan that happens to be passing, a capable wife compared to trading ships.Gen 23:16Gen 37:28Pro 31:14
works as a plain economic label inside the machinery of a state: the king's own buyers bringing horses up from Egypt, and a city's trading partners listed nation by nation with the goods each one brought to market.1Ki 10:28Ezk 27:16
Both
Both name the long-distance trader, the person whose living comes from carrying goods between countries and selling them on rather than keeping a shop at home, and the Greek word is the natural counterpart when the Old Testament's traders are put into Greek.Ezk 38:13Rev 18:11
Both end up in the same scene, the merchants standing around the wreck of a wealthy trading city. The traders of Tyre who ranked as princes are the model for the traders who watch their market die when Babylon falls.Isa 23:8Rev 18:15
is only ever the person, never the activity: it names a trader, so when the New Testament wants the act of doing business it has to use other words. In the parable it points at one dealer with an eye for a fine pearl, a man defined by what he buys and sells.Mat 13:45
carries scale and social rank with it. These are not stallholders but the men a whole imperial economy makes wealthy, and the word can be used to rank them among the leading figures of the world.Rev 18:3Rev 18:23
What scholars say about saḥar
Standard lexicons treat this as a single verb whose base meaning is "go about, travel around" (BDB; HALOT), from which the dominant commercial sense "trade, traffic" and the substantival participle "merchant, trader" develop; the merchant is precisely the one who ranges from land to land for business (Genesis 34:10, 21; 42:34; the Tyre trade lists of Ezekiel 27). The reduplicated form סְחַרְחַר in Psalm 38:11 (English 38:10) is read as a pealal expressing the violent "going round and round" of the heart, hence palpitation. Jeremiah 14:18 preserves the plainer "go about" sense, though it is sometimes given the commercial rendering "ply their trade." There is no serious dispute that the root is one word rather than two; the disagreement is limited to which nuance fits individual verses.