What Does Proverbs 6:5 Mean?
Snatch yourself free, like the gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like the bird from the hand of the snarer.
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
Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.THE KEY
“Deliver thyself” pictures escape as breaking free from a grip while escape is still possible.
THE MEANING
The verse sees you in danger, with escape still possible. Like a roe breaking from the hunter’s hand and a bird slipping from the fowler’s grasp, deliverance is movement out of another’s hold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being caught means you are helpless to escape.
THE ROOT
הִנָּצֵל
hinnāṣēl
GROWS FROM
נצל
To snatch away, rescue, or bring out of danger.
“Snatch yourself free” in this verse is hinnāṣēl. The word carries the image of being pulled out of another’s grasp. Its form here places escape in the foreground: you are to get free of the hold that threatens to keep you.
ALSO GROWS
hiṣṣîl: To rescue or deliver.
הִצִּיל
This form names the act of pulling someone out of danger, the same movement pictured in the verse.
haṣṣālāh: Rescue or deliverance.
הַצָּלָה
This noun names the result of that extraction: being brought out from what held you.
יָקוּשׁ
yāqûš
GROWS FROM
יקש
To set a snare or ensnare.
“snarer” in this verse is yāqûš. The fowler is named by the trapping root itself: he is the one who lays snares. The verse’s danger is not an accidental grip but the reach of someone who catches.
ALSO GROWS
môqēsh: A snare or trap.
מוֹקֵשׁ
This is the trap made by the fowler, the hidden mechanism behind his grasp.
yəqōšîm: Fowlers or trappers.
יְקוֹשִׁים
This plural form names those who set traps, making the fowler’s identity explicit in the root.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures deliverance as escape from a trapper’s grasp and release from the snare that holds.
Our living soul slips free like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we slip free.For he snatches you from the snare of the bird-catcher, from the plague of ruin.And that they may come back to their senses out of the snare of the Slanderer, who have been caught alive by him into his will.THE THREAD
For he snatches you from the snare of the bird-catcher, from the plague of ruin.The fowler in both verses is יָקוּשׁ (yāqûš), meaning a trapper, from יקש (yaqash), the root of snaring. Proverbs shows you breaking free from his hand; Psalm 91 names deliverance from the snare itself.
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