Fairs

Fairs ('izabhonim in Hebrew) is an archaic English rendering of a word found seven times in Ezekiel 27 and nowhere else in Scripture. The passage is a lament over Tyre, the great Phoenician commercial city, and the Hebrew word refers to the merchandise or wares exchanged in trade — what modern translations render as "wares" or "merchandise" rather than "fairs" in the sense of a market event (Ezekiel 27).

Ezekiel 27 is a remarkable economic document, cataloguing Tyre's trading partners across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world — from Tarshish in the west to Persia in the east, with specific trade goods listed for each region: silver, iron, tin, lead, slaves, horses, ivory, and spices. The theological force of the chapter is the fragility of commercial wealth: the very ships that made Tyre rich become the vessels of her destruction when the east wind shatters them in the heart of the sea.