What Does Proverbs 22:25 Mean?
Lest you be trained in his paths, and take a snare for your living soul.
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
Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.THE KEY
The trap is not only being near another person’s anger; it is learning its shape until it catches your own life.
THE MEANING
Your habits are not sealed off from the people you stay close to: repeated exposure trains a way of responding. A temper first witnessed in someone else can be learned until it becomes a snare for your own living self. The warning reaches beyond a passing thought to the patterns taking shape in you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is, “I can stay close to this anger and remain untouched by its pattern.” The verse warns that imitation itself can become the trap.
THE ROOT
תאלף
teʾalaf
GROWS FROM
אלף
To learn or become accustomed; related forms also carry the sense of teaching or training.
“be trained” in this verse is teʾalaf. The verb points beyond noticing another person’s ways: closeness can train you into them. The same root’s teaching sense makes the warning sharper, a pattern can instruct you through repeated exposure.
ALSO GROWS
ʾālap̄: Learn or become accustomed.
אָלַף
This is the movement in the verse: another person’s manner becomes familiar through closeness.
ʾallēp̄: Teach or train.
אַלֵּף
The shared root links learning with training: a pattern you absorb can shape how you respond.
לנפשך
lenafshekha
GROWS FROM
נפש
The living self as a whole, with wider uses that include a person’s appetite or desire.
“living soul” in this verse is lenafshekha. Nefesh names the living self, not a detached inner compartment. The snare reaches the person who is learning the pattern, including the desires and habits through which that person lives.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh ḥayyāh: A living soul; a living being.
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה
The phrase shows nefesh reaching across the whole living person, the self the learned pattern can catch.
nafsho: His living self; in some contexts, what he desires or longs for.
נַפְשׁוֹ
The word can touch appetite as well as life itself, showing how an adopted pattern can shape what the self wants.
מוקש
moqesh
GROWS FROM
יקש
To lay a snare or entrap.
“snare” in this verse is moqesh. The image is of something that catches and holds. What begins as a learned manner can become a trap that governs the learner’s own steps.
ALSO GROWS
yaqosh: Lay a snare or entrap.
יָקֹשׁ
The verb makes the danger active: a pattern can catch the person who takes it in.
moqesh: A snare or trap.
מוֹקֵשׁ
The noun names the result of that entanglement, the learned way becomes a constraint on the living self.
THE PATTERN
What a person repeatedly walks beside becomes a pattern within them, and that pattern can shape them toward wisdom or ruin.
Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.The one who walks with the wise becomes wise; the one who grazes beside the dull is broken.Do not wander; bad company rots good habits.THE THREAD
And they lie in wait for their own blood; they hide for their own living souls.The Hebrew word behind “lives” is נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh), the same word rendered “soul” here. In both verses, the snare reaches the living self: what someone sets in motion can return to catch their own life.
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