Ezekiel 28:5

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

by your great wisdom [and] by your traffic have you increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches;-

World English Bible · Public Domain

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בִּרְכֻלָּתְךָ֖

rᵉkullâh

H7404

“in/at · merchandise · your”

Preposition + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular

Appears 4× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Ezekiel 26:12

Full BDB Definition

Origin: pass part of H7402

TWOT: 2165a

merchandise, traffic, trade

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

8: words
7: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is בִּרְכֻלָּתְךָ֖ merchandise H7404 — appearing just 4 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

בִּרְכֻלָּתְךָ֖ merchandise H7404 occurs in 4 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
6 nouns

Verb forms

הִרְבִּ֣יתָ Hiphil · Perfect
וַיִּגְבַּ֥הּ Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

חֵילֶ֑ךָ strength H2428 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 23 words from the Hebrew and 21 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Ezekiel 28:5 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Psalms 52:7 "Behold, this is the man who didn't make God his strength, But trusted in the abundance of his riches, And strengthened himself in his wickedness."
Psalms 62:10 Don't trust in oppression. Don't become vain in robbery. If riches increase, Don't set your heart on them.
Ezekiel 28:2 Son of man, tell the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because your heart is lifted up, and you have said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet you are man, and not God, though you did set your heart as the heart of God;-
Hosea 13:6 According to their pasture, so were they filled; They were filled, and their heart was exalted. Therefore they have forgotten me.
Proverbs 11:28 He who trusts in his riches will fall, But the righteous shall flourish as the green leaf.
Hosea 12:7–8 A merchant has dishonest scales in his hand. He loves to defraud.
James 4:13–14 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow let's go into this city, and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit."
Deuteronomy 6:11–12 and houses full of all good things, which you didn't fill, and cisterns dug out, which you didn't dig, vineyards and olive trees, which you didn't plant, and you shall eat and be full;

Deuteronomy 8:13–14 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied;
Job 31:24–25 "If I have made gold my hope, And have said to the fine gold, 'You are my confidence;'
Proverbs 26:12 Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Isaiah 5:21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!
Daniel 4:37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven; for all his works are truth, and his ways justice; and those who walk in pride he is able to abase.
Romans 12:16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Don't set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Don't be wise in your own conceits.
1 Timothy 6:17 Charge those who are rich in this present world that they not be haughty, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy;
2 Chronicles 25:19 You say, Behold, you have struck Edom; and your heart lifts you up to boast: abide now at home; why should you meddle to [your] hurt, that you should fall, even you, and Judah with you?

2 Chronicles 32:23–25 Many brought gifts to Yahweh to Jerusalem, and precious things to Hezekiah king of Judah; so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations from thenceforth.
Proverbs 30:9 Lest I be full, deny you, and say, 'Who is Yahweh?' Or lest I be poor, and steal, And so dishonor the name of my God.
Isaiah 10:8–14 For he says, Aren't my princes all of them kings?
Isaiah 23:3 On great waters the seed of the Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, was her revenue; and she was the market of nations.
Isaiah 23:8 Who has purposed this against Tyre, the giver of crowns, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth?
Ezekiel 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 27:12–36 Tarshish was your merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded for your wares.
Daniel 4:30 The king spoke and said, Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?

Zechariah 9:3 Tyre built herself a stronghold, And heaped up silver like the dust, And fine gold like the mire of the streets.
Luke 12:16–21 He spoke a parable to them, saying, "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezekiel 28:5 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

בְּרֹ֧ב חָכְמָתְךָ֛ בִּרְכֻלָּתְךָ֖ הִרְבִּ֣יתָ חֵילֶ֑ךָ וַיִּגְבַּ֥הּ לְבָבְךָ֖ בְּחֵילֶֽךָ

by your great wisdom [and] by your traffic have you increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches;-

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezekiel 28:5 Septuagint · lemma form

ἐν ὁ πολύς ἐπιστήμη σύ καί ἐμπορία σύ πληθύνω δύναμις σύ ὑψόω ὁ καρδία σύ ἐν ὁ δύναμις σύ

By your abundant knowledge and your traffic you have multiplied your power; your heart has been lifted up by your power.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

בִּסְגִי חוֹכְמְתָךְ וּבִסְחוֹרָתָךְ סַגִיאָה מַשִׁרְיָתָךְ וְרָאֵים לִבָּךְ בְמַשִׁרְיָתָךְ:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Ezekiel 28:5 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Eze 28:5 By thy great wisdom [and] by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches:

Ver. 5. Thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches.] Like as the higher the flood riseth, the higher also doth the boat that floateth thereon. A small blast will blow up a bubble, so will a few paltry pounds puff up a carnal heart.

By thy great wisdom.] Here God did nothing. And such, for all the world, saith Oecolampadius, are our freewill men, with their ego feci, this I did. Such feci’s I did it’s are no better than faeces, dregs saith Luther; that is, dregs and dross.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

(Psa 62:10).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 5. By thy great wisdom] He attributed every thing to himself; he did not acknowledge a Divine providence. As he got all by himself, so he believed he could keep all by himself, and had no need of any foreign help.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Gill's Exposition

By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic,.... Or, "by thy great wisdom in thy traffic" (i); through great skill in trade and commerce:

hast thou increased thy riches; to a very great degree, a prodigious bulk; so antichrist has done, especially through trafficking with the souls of men, which is one part of his merchandise, as it was of Tyre, Rev 18:13,

and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches; which are apt to puff up and make men highminded, and swell them with a vain opinion of themselves, and to make haughty, insolent, and scornful, in their behaviour to others; thus elated with worldly grandeur and riches, the whore of Rome is represented as proud, vain, and haughty, Rev 18:7.

(i) "in negotione tua", V. L. Pagninus, Starckius; "in mercatura tua", Junius & Tremellius.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Thy great wisdom: here the eminent degree of this prince’s wisdom is owned.

And by thy traffic: and might as well be spared, for as it is not in the Hebrew, so it rather obscures than clears the text; let it be read, By thy great wisdom in thy traffic, and it is very plain, and so the French reads it increased; made great or enlarged.

Thy riches; thy power, as Eze 28:4.

Is lifted up; exalts itself, carrieth it loftily and proudly above thy neighbours, which is not good; above thyself, which is worse; and above God too, which is worst of all, as Eze 28:2.

Thy riches; thy puissance at home and abroad, by nature and art.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is rᵉkullâh (“merchandise”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “merchandise” (rᵉkullâh) shape what this verse is saying?
Ezekiel 26:12 shares the word «merchandise» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“strength” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
The verb «הִרְבִּ֣יתָ» is Hiphil Perfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 12 words in this verse.
“strength” occurs 2× in this single verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.