What Does Proverbs 5:22 Mean?
His own crookednesses catch the wicked, and he is held by the cords of his falling short.
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
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.THE KEY
What the wicked does becomes both the captor and the cord that keeps him caught.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of a person caught by their own wrongdoing: what they do becomes both the force that seizes them and the cord that holds them fast. The binding grows from within the person’s own actions.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that captivity must come from outside: here, a person’s own wrongdoing catches and binds them.
THE ROOT
יִלְכְּדֻנוֹ
yilkeduno
GROWS FROM
לכד
לכד (lakad) means to catch, seize, or capture.
“catch” in this verse is yilkeduno. The verse makes a person’s own wrongdoing the agent of capture. What they do does not merely surround them; it catches them.
ALSO GROWS
malkōdet: trap or snare
מִלְכֹּדֶת
This branch names the trap itself, making the verse’s capture imagery concrete: the person is caught in what has become a snare.
nilkād: caught or captured
נִלְכָּד
This form describes the one seized; the verse uses the same root to show the wicked person as the captive of their own actions.
יִתָּמֵךְ
yittamekh
GROWS FROM
תמך
תמך (tamak) means to grasp, hold, or support.
“held” in this verse is yittamekh. The verb can describe an active grasp as well as support. Here, the cords of a person’s own wrongdoing provide the grip that holds them fast.
ALSO GROWS
tomkheha: those who grasp or hold her
תֹּמְכֶיהָ
In Proverbs 3:18 this form describes people laying hold of wisdom; here, the root’s grasping sense illuminates the cords’ hold on a person.
tamkhu: they grasped or held
תָּמְכוּ
In Proverbs 31:19, hands grasp a spindle; the same root makes the cords here feel like an active grip.
חַטָּאתוֹ
ḥaṭṭāʾtō
GROWS FROM
חטא
חטא (ḥāṭāʾ) carries the sense of missing, failing, or committing a fault.
The word translated “sins” belongs to a root family associated with missing or failing. The verse binds that idea to capture and cords: the missing is not abstract here, but entangles the person in its consequences.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: to miss, fail, or commit a fault
חָטָא
This verb brings the sense of “missing” into the verse’s description of what becomes a snare.
ḥōṭēʾ: one who misses or commits a fault
חוֹטֵא
This form names the person by the action, while the verse shows that action becoming the force that catches and holds them.
THE PATTERN
What a person sets in motion can become the force that catches or holds them.
He digs a pit and hollows it out, and falls into the pit he works.For he is sent into a net by his own feet, and he walks in a mesh.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
The nations sink into the pit they made; in the net they hid, their own foot is caught.The KJV’s “taken” translates נִלְכְּדָה (nilkedah, was caught), from לכד (lakad, catch or capture), the same Hebrew root behind “take” in Proverbs. The psalm makes the mechanism visible: a foot is caught in a net its owner hid.
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