What Does Jeremiah 5:26 Mean?
For among my people wicked men are found. They watch like bird-catchers, and set snares, and catch men.
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
For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.THE KEY
The “trap” is rooted in destruction, revealing concealed capture as an instrument of ruin.
THE MEANING
Even inside a community that feels like your own, harm can be deliberate: someone watches, lays a snare, and takes people as prey. This verse names the mechanism from concealed attention to capture, without calling it an accident.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that danger always comes from outside and announces itself: the one arranging harm may be inside the community, watching unseen.
THE ROOT
מַשְׁחִית
mashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
sh-ḥ-t
To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
The word translated “trap” is מַשְׁחִית (mashchit), a destructive thing from שחת (sh-ḥ-t), to ruin or corrupt. The line names the trap by its outcome: this is harm engineered to destroy, not a neutral device that happens to catch someone.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
שָׁחַת
The same root can describe something being corrupted; here, the trap is an instrument that carries ruin outward.
hamashchit: The destroyer.
הַמַּשְׁחִית
This form names an agent by its destructive work, echoing how the trap makes its setter an agent of deliberate harm.
יְקוּשִׁים
yequshim
GROWS FROM
יקש
y-q-sh
To set a snare or ensnare.
“set snares” in this verse is yequshim. The “snares” come from יקש (y-q-sh), the root of setting a snare; יָקוֹשׁ (yaqosh) names a fowler, a bird-catcher. The hunter’s craft is built into the description, showing people being handled as prey.
ALSO GROWS
moqesh: A snare or trap.
מוֹקֵשׁ
This related noun makes the hidden catching device explicit: a snare is set to take its target.
yaqosh: A fowler or bird-catcher.
יָקוֹשׁ
The fowler is the human pattern echoed here: the watcher treats people as creatures to be trapped.
יִלְכֹּדוּ
yilkodu
GROWS FROM
לכד
l-k-d
To seize or capture.
יִלְכֹּדוּ (yilkodu, “they catch”) comes from לכד (l-k-d), a root of taking or capturing; מַלְכֹּדֶת (malqodet) is a trap from the same seed. The verse joins the set trap and the captured person in one action-family: the device is made for capture.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To seize or capture.
לָכַד
The root makes clear that the result is taking possession of a person, not merely watching them.
malqodet: A trap or snare.
מַלְכֹּדֶת
The trap itself carries the capture-root, joining the device to the act it is designed to perform.
THE PATTERN
Predation hides its intention, watches for vulnerability, and turns people into prey through capture.
He lies in wait in the hidden place, like a lion in his shelter. He lies in wait to snatch the poor; he snatches the poor, dragging him into his net.And they lie in wait for their own blood; they hide for their own living souls.And they watched him, and sent out spies who played at being aligned, so that they might seize on his word, and hand him over to the rule and authority of the governor.THE THREAD
The nations sink into the pit they made; in the net they hid, their own foot is caught.Jeremiah’s יִלְכֹּדוּ (yilkodu, “they catch”) and this verse’s נִלְכְּדָה (nilkedah, “is caught”) share לכד (l-k-d), “capture.” Here the hidden net catches its makers’ own foot, exposing the same snare as something that can turn back on the one who sets it.
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