When reading Eze.28 the other day, I ran into something strange. We always think of Lucifer as falling because of pride, which he did, but he was involved in a lot more. What we have missed is in verses 16 and 18 of Eze.28. It says he was found perfect until iniquity was found in him, because of the “multitude of his merchandise and by his trafficking.” The root word for both these (merchandise & trafficking) is rkullah. In Strong’s Bible Dictionary, it says these words mean as peddling-trade. Now this leads us to ask, trading what, merchandising what? Well he was involved in some kind of heavenly commerce. Now that’s not to say he was using the old greenbacks up there, but you can be dishonest in other things just as easy. Perhaps as the one heading the worship service, he may have been the one to bring the spices to the altar. So he could have been involved in cheating in this area. We know whatever he had, he had a lot of it, and he didn’t work well with wealth. Neither do people down here, most of the time.

Ezekiel says, because of his “multitude” of merchandising and trafficking, he was filled with violence from within. The Hebrew word for violence is “chamac”, which Strong’s defines as a wrongful image. What was that wrongful image he had within himself, pride. It seems people who accumulate a lot of money, end up looking down at others, and a wrongful image develops in them. They begin to see their wealth as something “they did.” The apostle Paul warns against this as he writes to Timothy, warning him to tell people not to trust in uncertain riches. Basically, there are circulators and accumulators in this world. In seems the same was true even back then in Heaven. I think Lucifer was a bit too much of an accumulator of spices or “something.” Let us make sure we don’t make the same mistake!