saḥar

• This word names an amount that can be weighed against something else and judged. Proverbs prices wisdom with it, saying the return on wisdom beats the return on silver, and the capable woman looks at what her trading brings in and sees that it is good.Pro 3:14Pro 31:18
• What it names can change hands. The earnings of a trading city are set apart for the LORD and spent on food and good clothing for those who serve him, and the tradeable wealth of Cush is promised to Israel.Isa 23:18Isa 45:14
• It can stand for a whole city's commerce as one thing. Tyre is called the trade of the nations, which names the business flowing through her rather than any of the people doing it.Isa 23:3

• Both are load-bearing words in the oracle against Tyre, where together they size up one seagoing commercial empire. Her traders are ranked with princes, and her commerce is called the commerce of the whole world.Isa 23:2Isa 23:8Isa 23:3Isa 23:18
• Both appear in the portrait of the capable woman in Proverbs 31, and both are used there with approval. She is likened to trading ships that bring food from far off, and she can see that what her business earns is good.Pro 31:14Pro 31:18
• Neither word passes a verdict on the money. The same vocabulary runs through a flat inventory of the nations who supplied Tyre and through a promise that a greedy city's takings will one day be holy to the LORD.Ezk 27:12Ezk 27:16Isa 23:18
• Both describe wealth crossing borders rather than local buying and selling. One names the desert peoples who brought lambs and rams into Tyre, the other the goods of Cush that will be carried over to Israel.Ezk 27:21Isa 45:14

• This word points at people. It names the traders themselves: the dealers whose weights of silver everyone accepts as standard, the caravan company that buys Joseph and carries him down to Egypt, and the traders of Tyre who rank as high as princes.Gen 23:16Gen 37:28Isa 23:8
• It names something a ruler can grant or refuse inside his own territory. Hamor offers Jacob's family the right to settle and do business in the land, and Joseph makes the same right the term of his deal with his brothers.Gen 34:10Gen 34:21Gen 42:34
• The traders it names act and react as characters in the scene. They hiss in horror when Tyre goes down, they scatter each his own direction when Babylon falls, and they turn up questioning an invader about the plunder he is after.Ezk 27:36Isa 47:15Ezk 38:13
• Only this word leaves the marketplace behind. It describes prophets and priests ranging through a land they do not know, and a heart going round and round in the chest of a man worn down by pain.Jer 14:18Psa 38:10

• Points at the return rather than at the goods: what the trading earns, an amount you can set beside other wealth and call better or worse. Proverbs 3:14 weighs it against "the profit of silver", and in Proverbs 31:18 the capable wife tastes that her own trading is coming out good.Pro 3:14Pro 31:18
• Works even when nothing is bought or sold. Proverbs 3:14 applies it to what wisdom pays back, so the picture of a trader's gain carries over to something no ship could ever load.Pro 3:14
• Widens out to a whole trading business and the wealth it produces: a city that has become the commerce of the nations (Isaiah 23:3), an income that can be set apart as holy and then spent on food and good clothing (Isaiah 23:18), the earnings of one country's trade passing over to another (Isaiah 45:14).Isa 23:3Isa 23:18Isa 45:14

• Both belong to the world of long distance sea trade, and both can sum up a whole region's traffic as one thing belonging to a trading power: Tyre becomes the "trade" of the nations in Isaiah 23:3, and many coastlands are the "merchandise" of Tyre's hand in Ezekiel 27:15.Isa 23:3Ezk 27:15

• Names the stock itself, the goods passing through a trader's hands. In its one appearance the surrounding words are cargo you could load: horns of ivory and ebony are what came back in payment, and no gain is measured anywhere in the verse.Ezk 27:15

• Ties the gain to buying and selling: it is what a trading venture brings back in, priced the way a merchant prices things.Pro 3:14Pro 31:18
• Reaches past the earnings to the trading business itself and the goods it moves, so a whole city can be called the trade of the nations.Isa 23:3Isa 45:14
• Passes no verdict on how the money was made, which is why it can be used with approval of a hardworking woman whose dealing pays.Pro 31:18Isa 23:18

• Both name what a person comes away with from an undertaking, the return that decides whether it was worth doing.Gen 37:26Job 22:3Pro 3:14
• Both can be taken out of ordinary hands and handed over to God, the plunder devoted to him and the trader's profit set apart as holy.Mic 4:13Isa 23:18

• Names gain taken at someone else's expense, so the prophets use it as a standing charge against rulers who bleed the people for money.Ezk 22:27Jer 22:171Sa 8:3
• Can name the craving and not only the money, so a heart is asked to turn away from it and a trustworthy leader is described as hating it.Psa 119:36Exo 18:21Pro 28:16
• Carries the blunt question of whether an act pays off at all, with no thought of trade behind it: what do we get out of this?Gen 37:26Mal 3:14Psa 30:9
• Covers the gain seized in war, the plunder carried off from a beaten enemy rather than anything earned.Jdg 5:19Mic 4:13

• Names the return a venture brings in, an amount you can set on a scale against a rival gain. Wisdom's return is weighed against what silver returns, and a working woman can see for herself that her trading pays.Pro 3:14Pro 31:18
• It reaches well past the great trading cities and covers ordinary earning. One household's takings and a distant nation's saleable produce are both described with it.Pro 31:18Isa 45:14
• The word passes no verdict on how the money was made, which is why the takings of a city known for greed can be handed over and set apart for the LORD.Isa 23:18Isa 23:3

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• It is a body of goods solid enough to be seized. When the city falls, an invading army loots it and carries it off with the rest of the spoil.Ezk 26:12
• Wrongdoing is placed inside the trading itself. Violence fills it and injustice runs through it, so the charge is brought against the commerce rather than against the money it earned.Ezk 28:16Ezk 28:18
• It belongs to the trader who runs it. It is the operation a person is personally skilled at, and his fortune piles up out of the way he works it.Ezk 28:5