What Does Matthew 22:15 Mean?
Then the separated ones went and took counsel how they might ensnare him in his word.
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
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.THE KEY
The hidden move is that they turn conversation itself into a trap.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes a familiar maneuver now: someone frames a conversation so that every answer can be used to corner the speaker. Beneath the exchange sits a purpose to capture, and that purpose changes the meaning of the words being offered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
An apparently ordinary question is not always an honest search for understanding; speech can be arranged to make someone vulnerable.
THE ROOT
παγιδεύσωσιν
pagideusōsin
GROWS FROM
παγιδ-
pagid-
trap, snare
“ensnare” in this verse is pagideusōsin. The Greek verb carries the image of a snare: their aim is to make speech the mechanism that catches him. The same word family names both the trap and the act of setting one, so the conversation is shaped as capture before an answer is given.
ALSO GROWS
pagis: snare, trap
παγίς
The noun names the device behind the verb’s image: a trap prepared to catch what enters it.
pagideuō: to ensnare, trap
παγιδεύω
This is the verb’s dictionary form, making clear that their purpose is capture through his words.
THE PATTERN
Speech becomes a snare when its aim is to capture a person rather than understand an answer.
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.A man who smooths over his neighbor spreads a net for his steps.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
And he must hold a good witness from those outside, lest he fall into mockery and the snare of the Slanderer.The Greek word translated “snare” here belongs to the same παγιδ- family as Matthew’s “entangle.” Matthew shows the trap being set through speech; this verse names the trap and the reproach into which someone can fall.
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