He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress.
He is a merchant - a play on the double sense of the Hebrew, "Canaan," i:e., a Canaanite and a "merchant" (Ezekiel 16:3, "Thy birth and thy nativity is ... of Canaan: thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite"). They who naturally were descendants of pious Jacob had become virtually Canaanites, who were proverbial as cheating merchants (cf. Isaiah 23:11, margin, 'The Lord hath given a commandment concerning a merchantman:' Hebrew, 'Canaan.' To "keep mercy and judgment" (Hosea 12:6), they must be wholly changed from their present character. He calls Israel a Canaanite, the greatest reproach to Israel, who despised Canaan. The Phoenicians called themselves Canaanites or merchants (Isaiah 23:8, "Tyre, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth." They were infamous us griping 'money-lovers' ('Odyssey,' 14: 283; 15: 413).
The balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress - open violence: as the "balances of deceit" imply underhand fraud.