merchant

Distinctions

socher (סוחר)

Root ס-ח-ר, about sixteen times in Tanach, with verbs for trading and nouns for merchandise; the Midianite socharim who passed by Yosef's pit and, the pasuk implies, bought him and sold him to the Yishmaelim (Bereishis 37:28). The root also carries "around": secharchar (Tehillim 38:11), round-going movement, and modern Hebrew secharchoret, dizziness; Targum's usual rendering of saviv is s'chor; and Chazal have the warning to a nazir who nears a vineyard, lech lech, sechor sechor, "go, go, around, around, do not approach the vineyard" (Shabbos 13a and parallels). Ibn Saruk and Ibn Janach seem to take the "merchant" and "around" senses as two unrelated meanings in one root; Radak bridges them, since a merchant typically travels around. Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (1821-1898) suggests that perhaps socher derives instead from sahar, "moon," the ches and hei interchanging, since just as the full moon is seen as a complete circle, so the socher goes around in a circuit selling his wares.

rochel (רוכל)

Seventeen times, mostly in Yechezkel, with a feminine rocheles. The adjacent rachil from the same root gives rechilus, talebearing, famously at Vayikra 19:16 and in five other passages (Yirmiyahu 6:28, 9:3; Yechezkel 22:9; Mishlei 11:13, 20:19), because merchants who travelled from place to place were often taken for tale-mongers, carrying news and rumor from one town to the next. Rashi (to Vayikra 19:16) reads the kaf as interchangeable with gimmel, linking rochel to regel, "foot," and meragel, "spy"; Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (Chosam Tochnis) explains that a merchant has in some ways to function like a spy, going place to place to scout out the best merchandise to buy and sell. The column adds its own suggestion, that perhaps a rochel would typically travel by foot to hawk his goods, which is much the same idea as the "around" in socher. Rashbam (to Bava Basra 29b) sharpens the definition further: the rochel goes around the various towns and comes back to his home city only after a while.

cnaani (כנעני)

Pesachim 50a holds that Yehudah's father-in-law could not have been a literal Canaanite: if Avraham was so particular that Yitzchak not marry a Canaanite woman (Bereishis 24:3, 24:37), and Yaakov's parents were as meticulous about Yaakov (27:46, 28:1, 28:6), it is highly implausible that Yehudah would go against the norm. Chazal were therefore forced to read ish cnaani (38:2) as his occupation, a merchant; Ramban (to 38:2) clarifies that even so he incidentally lived in the land of Canaan, and see Radak there.

The reading is less farfetched than it sounds, since cnaani means "merchant" in a number of pesukim. Yeshayahu 23:8 calls Tyre "the magnificent, whose merchants (socher) are princes, whose cnaanim are the esteemed of the earth," which Rashi and Radak read as merchants, Metzudas Zion adding that socher and cnaan are synonyms set side by side for poetic effect. Tyre, the column notes, is associated with the Canaanite sub-group known as Phoenician/Punic, a community largely made up of traders who won a reputation in the ancient world for their success in overseas commerce. Echoing that, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter (1743-1826) writes in HaRechasim LaVikah (to Vayikra 16:21) that while cnaani may originally have been a gentilic for the Canaanite people, once they gained fame as traders the word widened to anyone in that trade; the column adds that an inscription attributed to Pharaoh Rameses III seemingly uses cnaani in this latter sense.

Zechariah 14:21 foretells a Messianic era, long after the Canaanites had ceased to exist as a nation, in which there will be no cnaani in the Beis HaMikdash. The commentators explain the prediction in various ways, most of them taking it to mean that there will no longer be any need for merchants to offer their goods, and Rashi (there) cites that explanation; alternatively Rashi reads cnaani as a contraction of ein kan ani, "there is no poor man here," a reference to the prosperity the Jewish People will enjoy then.

The eishes chayil makes linens and sells them, "and a sash she gives to the cnaani" (Mishlei 31:24), where the commentators unanimously take cnaani as a merchant, Rashi using the Aramaic tagar, Ibn Ezra and Ralbag the Hebrew socher.

Against all this precedent, Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920-2016) notes a major difficulty: Shua's daughter herself is called a cnaanis (Divrei HaYamim I 2:3), which should mean "Canaanitess" literally, and it makes no sense for the pasuk to call the daughter by an appellation that fits her father's occupation, which suggests that cnaani said of the father is a nationality after all. Unless, perhaps, the column answers, Shua's daughter was a trader herself: Targum Rav Yosef to Divrei HaYamim there renders cnaanis as pragmatita, a Greek term for a female merchant, which supports Chazal's reading of the father's cnaani as well.

The Zohar (Lech Lecha 80a) says the yetzer hara is called cnaani because it serves as a sort of merchant, supplying its customers with (evil) sustenance like a sleazy salesman who hawks poor merchandise and convinces his buyers they cannot live without it. In line with this, though without citing it, Meiri (to Mishlei 31:24) explains the Woman of Valor's selling a sash to the cnaani as her setting boundaries around the yetzer hara to rein it in. Tanchuma (Masei 9) explains that the Holy Land is called Eretz Cnaan because it is the land of merchandise; Rabbi Shlomo Fischer (1932-2021) clarifies that this is not any physical commodity or natural resource but Torah, which is more precious than any article of trade (Mishlei 3:14), so that the land is especially suited to Torah study. Either way, cnaan there is being expounded as merchants and merchandise, not genealogical Canaanites.

tagar (תגר)

The word Chazal use when they gloss cnaani: Targum Onkelos and Targum pseudo-Yonasan to Bereishis 38:2, Bereishis Rabbah 85:4, Pesachim 50a, Rashi to Bereishis 38:2, and others; Targum also uses it for socher (Melachim I 10:28; Yeshayahu 23:8) and for rochel (Melachim I 10:15).

Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur (1469-1549), in his lexicon of Rabbinic Hebrew Sefer HaTishbi, gives ת-ג-ר two separate entries, tagar ("merchant") and teigar ("dispute," "controversy," "fight"), and the fact that he divided them shows he took the two as unrelated. Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) writes in Aruch HaShaleim to the same effect: tagar derives from the triliteral Aramaic root ת-ג-ר, while teigar derives from the biblical Hebrew root ג-ר-(ה), to instigate or incite.

On that basis the column argues its own point, that although tagar is semantically synonymous with socher, the two cannot strictly be called synonyms, since they come from two different languages. But Eruvin 55a says Torah is not found among socharim or tagarim, who are always looking elsewhere for the goods, and that wording implies the two do not quite mean the same thing. Rashi (there) accordingly reads a real difference: the socher goes around the various towns, the tagar is a local seller who stays in his own town, so that on Rashi the difference is semantic and not only etymological.

pragmatia and melay

Pragmatia/prakmatia in Rabbinic Hebrew are Greek loanwords for "merchandise," etymologically related to the English pragmatic and practical; Rashi (to Moed Katan 10b) defines pragmatia as sechorah, which brings the cluster full circle. Melay, "merchandise," "stock," seems to be a cognate of maleh, "full," yet Rashi defines it as sechorah (Pesachim 53b), as pragmatia (Shabbos 56a), or as both (Sotah 47b).

Rendering guidance

• One word alone: סוחר "merchant," רוכל "peddler," תגר "merchant." Where two or three stand together, grade them: "wholesaler," "trader," "peddler."
• Trap: English "merchant" absorbs all four. Yeshayahu 23:8 is the test, since socher and cnaani stand in one sentence; render "merchants" and "traders," not "merchants" twice.
• כנעני in Bereishis 38:2, Mishlei 31:24, Yeshayahu 23:8, Yechezkel 16:29, Hoshea 12:8, and Iyov 41:30 is "merchant." Writing "Canaanite" at Bereishis 38:2 contradicts Pesachim 50a.
• רכילות stays "talebearing," not "peddling." Where a source pairs socher with tagar (Eruvin 55a), keep "travelling merchants" against "local dealers."

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayeshev: Mercantile Man," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 26 Kislev 5784 (2023-12-09): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11160-vayeshev-mercantile-man.md. Three slips in the article, corrected here rather than repeated: it prints secharchar as Prov. 38:11, but Mishlei has no perek 38 and the word is at Tehillim 38:11; it cites the description of Shua as ish cnaani at Gen. 38:1, where the pasuk is 38:2 (as its own later citations of Ramban and Radak have it); and it names the letter Rashi to Vayikra 19:16 interchanges with gimmel as the ches, where the letter in Rashi is the kaf. Primary loci: Bereishis 24:3, 24:37, 27:46, 28:1, 28:6, 37:28, 38:2; Vayikra 19:16 with Rashi; Mishlei 3:14, 11:13, 20:19, 31:24; Yirmiyahu 6:28, 9:3; Yeshayahu 23:8 with Rashi, Radak and Metzudas Zion; Yechezkel 17:4 and 27:3 with Malbim, and 22:9; Zechariah 14:21 with Rashi; Tehillim 38:11; Melachim I 10:15, 10:28; Divrei HaYamim I 2:3 with Targum Rav Yosef; Pesachim 50a and 53b; Eruvin 55a and Erchin 23b with Rashi; Shabbos 13a, 56a, 90a, 91b; Yevamos 24b, 63b; Kiddushin 82a; Bava Kamma 82a; Bava Basra 22a; Nazir 21a (pseudo-Rashi); Moed Katan 10b; Sotah 47b; Bava Basra 29b with Rashbam; Bereishis Rabbah 85:4; Tanchuma Masei 9 (Eretz Cnaan as the land of merchandise, explained of Torah by Rabbi Shlomo Fischer); Zohar Lech Lecha 80a with Meiri to Mishlei 31:24; Chosam Tochnis; Sefer HaTishbi; Aruch HaShaleim.