What Does Proverbs 6:2 Mean?
You are snared in the words of your mouth; you are caught in the words of your mouth.
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
Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.THE KEY
The same words become both the snare that catches you and the force that holds you.
THE MEANING
Your speech can become a boundary around your own next steps: what leaves your mouth may catch you and hold you to its consequences. The verse repeats “the words of thy mouth” to show that both the first snare and the final capture rise from the same source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that words disappear without binding their speaker: what you say can become the very terms that hold you.
THE ROOT
נוֹקַשְׁתָּ
noqashta
GROWS FROM
יקש
y-q-sh
To set a snare; to ensnare.
“snared” in this verse is noqashta. This root gives מוֹקֵשׁ (moqesh), a snare, and יָקוּשׁ (yaqush), a fowler: the image is a trap-setter’s mechanism, not a vague feeling of regret. What the mouth says becomes the catching device.
ALSO GROWS
moqesh: A snare, trap, or stumbling block.
מוֹקֵשׁ
It makes the verse’s image concrete: the spoken words are the means of capture.
yaqush: A fowler, one who catches birds with snares.
יָקוּשׁ
It reveals the active catching force behind the word “snared.”
נִלְכַּדְתָּ
nilkadta
GROWS FROM
לכד
l-k-d
To catch, seize, or capture.
This second root names being caught or captured, so the parallel line moves from a trap’s catch to captivity. Paired with יקש, the utterance catches first and then holds.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To catch, seize, or capture.
לָכַד
This verb names the force of the second line: the speaker is no longer merely near a trap, but caught.
miklōdet: A trap or snare.
מִלְכֹּדֶת
This noun from the same root shows how capture takes shape as a trap.
אִמְרֵי פִיךָ
imrei fikha
GROWS FROM
אמר
ʾ-m-r
To say or utter.
The repeated phrase אִמְרֵי פִיךָ (imrei fikha, “the words of your mouth”) anchors both actions to one source. The root’s branch אִמְרָה names an utterance or saying, so “words” carries a spoken act whose effects remain attached to the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
amar: To say or speak.
אָמַר
It names the spoken act that supplies the material for the snare.
imrah: An utterance or saying.
אִמְרָה
It shows that the “words” are specific acts of speech, repeated as the source of both capture images.
THE PATTERN
Speech can become a net whose consequences return to enclose the speaker.
Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.For by your words you will be made aligned, and by your words you will be condemned.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
For by your words you will be made aligned, and by your words you will be condemned.Matthew names the same two-sided consequence: the speaker’s own words become the basis for a verdict. Proverbs pictures those words as a trap closing around the speaker; Matthew shows their force as testimony for or against them.
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