What Does 2 Samuel 22:6 Mean?
The cords of Sheol encircle me; the snares of death meet me.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me;THE KEY
The “sorrows” are cords: this verse pictures death as a grip that binds and closes around you.
THE MEANING
When death feels near, this verse speaks from inside the constriction: cords close around you, traps catch at your steps, and danger gets there first. Its images give the pressure a shape you can recognize as something that surrounds and catches.
THE ROOT
חבלי
ḥevlei
GROWS FROM
חבל
The root’s concrete image is a cord or band that binds; חֶבֶל (ḥevel) means “cord” or “rope.”
“cords of Sheol” in this verse is ḥevlei. The form behind “sorrows” also carries the image of cords, while related חֲבָלִים (ḥavalim) can mean “pangs.” English holds the pain; the Hebrew also lets you feel its tightening, binding force.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: Cord, rope, or band.
חֶבֶל
This branch makes the verse’s distress a tangible binding that closes around the speaker.
ḥavalim: Pangs or birth pains.
חֲבָלִים
This related sense shows how the same word family can name pain as a constricting bodily force.
קדמוני
qiddemuni
GROWS FROM
קדם
Before, in front; to come before, meet, or precede.
“meet” in this verse is qiddemuni. Here “prevented” carries the older sense of “came before” or “met.” The danger reaches the speaker ahead of him, as though it arrives before he can get clear.
ALSO GROWS
qadam: To come before, meet, or precede.
קָדַם
This verb makes the danger an encounter that reaches the speaker first.
qedem: Front, east, or what is ancient and earlier.
קֶדֶם
The related word keeps the root’s sense of what lies before or ahead.
מוקשי
moqeshei
GROWS FROM
יקש
To set a snare or trap; to ensnare.
“snares” in this verse is moqeshei. The plural form makes death sound like a field of traps. The root names capture itself, giving the verse an image of danger that catches and holds.
ALSO GROWS
moqesh: A snare or trap.
מוֹקֵשׁ
This noun is the concrete image carried by “snares of death.”
yaqush: A fowler, one who catches birds with a snare.
יָקוּשׁ
This related form reveals the trap as a mechanism of capture, not merely a feeling of fear.
THE PATTERN
Death’s pressure is pictured as an enclosing grip, and its release as that grip being loosed.
The cords of the hollow circle me; the snares of death meet me.The waters surrounded me up to my living soul; the deep closed in around me, and reeds wrapped about my head.God raised him up, having loosed the labor pangs of death, for it was not possible for him to be held by it.THE THREAD
The cords of death wrap around me, and the narrows of Sheol find me; I find the narrow place and sorrow.The phrase חבלי (ḥevlei, “cords” or “pangs”) appears here too, placing the image of binding inside “sorrows.” Psalm 116 sets the cords of death beside the pains of Sheol, showing the same enclosing grip from another angle.
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