What Does Proverbs 29:6 Mean?
In the rebellion of an evil man is a snare, but the aligned sings and cries out in joy.
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
In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare: but the righteous doth sing and rejoice.THE KEY
The break itself becomes the trap; alignment carries the seed of song.
THE MEANING
Where rebellion governs your path, its own breach becomes a snare. Where you are aligned, song and joy rise as the path’s expression.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that breaking away guarantees freedom: the break itself can become the trap.
THE ROOT
פֶּשַׁע
peshaʿ
GROWS FROM
פ־ש־ע
p-sh-ʿ
To rebel, revolt, or break away.
English “transgression” can sound like crossing a line, but pesha names rebellion, a rupture. Here that rupture becomes its own constriction: the snare grows from within the breaking away.
ALSO GROWS
pashaʿ: To rebel or transgress.
פָּשַׁע
The verb shows rebellion as an enacted rupture, not merely a violation on record.
posheaʿ: One who rebels; a transgressor.
פֹּשֵׁעַ
The same root names the person shaped by that breaking away.
מוֹקֵשׁ
moqesh
GROWS FROM
י־ק־ש
y-q-sh
To lay a snare or ensnare.
The snare belongs to a word family that names both the act of trapping and the trapper. The verse’s danger is an entanglement that catches a person through the course of rebellion itself.
ALSO GROWS
yaqash: To lay a snare; to ensnare.
יָקַשׁ
The verb reveals the active catching contained in the noun “snare.”
yaqosh: A fowler; one who sets a snare.
יָקוֹשׁ
The same root names the one who traps, making the snare’s catching force vivid.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צ־ד־ק
ts-d-q
To be right, just, or aligned.
“the aligned” in this verse is tsaddiq. The English can make “righteous” sound like a moral label; its Hebrew root also carries the sense of alignment. In this verse, alignment finds expression in singing and joy.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
It names the quality that the righteous person embodies.
tsedaqah: Righteousness or justice.
צְדָקָה
It extends the same root into a quality expressed in life and action.
THE PATTERN
Rebellion’s own course becomes constriction, while alignment expresses itself in joy.
His own crookednesses catch the wicked, and he is held by the cords of his falling short.The alignment of the straight snatches them, but the treacherous are seized in their own craving.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
The waiting of the aligned is gladness; the cord of the restless perishes.The same Hebrew word צַדִּיק (tsaddiq, righteous or aligned) appears in both verses. Proverbs 10:28 names gladness as the righteous person’s hope, widening this verse’s song into the fruit of an aligned path.
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