TO TRAFFIC IN a person — to treat a human being as merchandise, to work him as property. The verb stands in two verses of the Hebrew Bible, both Deuteronomy and both about a person who has fallen into another's hands: the captive wife a soldier may not traffic in at 21:14, and the kidnapper who traffics in the brother he stole and sells him at 24:7, and dies for it. The derivation is uncertain and the sense is fixed by its two contexts: it is what turns a person into stock. The shelf gropes for it — the KJV and Geneva 'make merchandise of', the ASV 'deal with as a slave', the NWT 1984 'deal tyrannically with', the RV 1909 «mercadear con», the RV60 «esclavizar» at 24:7. → first discussed at Deut 21:14