What Does Job 18:10 Mean?
A cord is hidden for him in the ground, and a trap lies for him in the path.
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 snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.THE KEY
What the verse calls a snare is a hidden cord: capture is woven beneath the ground and across the path, where ordinary movement meets it.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now of hidden entrapment: the binding cord lies under the ground, while capture waits along the path. What appears to be firm footing or an ordinary route can carry restraint before it becomes visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A clear path and solid footing do not guarantee freedom from a trap; danger can be concealed in what looks passable.
THE ROOT
טָמוּן
tamun
GROWS FROM
טמן
t-m-n
To hide or bury; טָמוּן means hidden or buried.
The Hebrew gives the snare the quality of something buried out of sight. The same root appears in a word for hidden treasure, so concealment can hold something valuable or something dangerous.
ALSO GROWS
taman: to hide or bury
טָמַן
This verb makes the snare’s concealment part of the verse’s picture.
matmon: hidden treasure or hoard
מַטְמוֹן
The shared root shows how something hidden can lie beneath the surface, unseen until it is uncovered.
חַבְלוֹ
ḥavlo
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
A cord or bond; to bind.
The word rendered “snare” carries the image of a cord that binds. English names the danger by its function; the Hebrew also lets you feel the binding material inside it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: cord or rope
חֶבֶל
This branch makes the snare a binding cord hidden in the ground.
ḥavalim: cords
חֲבָלִים
The same form appears in Psalm 140:5, where cords are spread with a snare beside the way.
מַלְכֻּדְתּוֹ
malkudto
GROWS FROM
לכד
l-k-d
To catch, seize, or capture.
The trap is named through the act of capture: it is not merely an object on the path, but a mechanism that takes hold. Together with the hidden cord, the word shows restraint prepared before the traveler sees it.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: to catch or capture
לָכַד
The verb reveals what the trap does when the hidden mechanism closes.
malkodet: snare or trap
מִלְכֹּדֶת
This noun from the same root names the device through the capture it brings about.
THE PATTERN
Capture can be prepared in the ground or route that seems ordinary, leaving its danger unseen until it closes.
The lifted ones have hidden a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net beside the path; they have set traps for me. Selah.For humankind does not perceive its time. As fish are caught in an evil net, and as birds are caught in the snare, so humankind is caught in an evil time, when it falls upon them in a flash.And that they may come back to their senses out of the snare of the Slanderer, who have been caught alive by him into his will.THE THREAD
The lifted ones have hidden a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net beside the path; they have set traps for me. Selah.Job’s חַבְלוֹ (ḥavlo, his cord or snare) and the Psalm’s חֲבָלִים (ḥavalim, cords) share the root חבל (ḥ-b-l), meaning cord or bond. The Psalm unfolds the image compressed in Job’s word: cords and a net are spread beside the way, ready to bind.
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