What Does Psalm 140:5 Mean?
The lifted ones have hidden a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net beside the path; they have set traps for me. Selah.
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
The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. Selah.THE KEY
The danger is laid beside the path in forms you cannot see until they tighten.
THE MEANING
You can be moving along an ordinary path while danger has been hidden beside it: a snare, cords, and a net are already in place. The verse lets the threat stay deliberate and close, while “Selah” holds the weight of naming it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that danger must announce itself before it is real; here the trap is hidden before it is encountered.
THE ROOT
טָמְנוּ
ṭāmĕnū
GROWS FROM
טמן
ṭ-m-n
To hide or bury, placing something out of sight.
The root gives “hid” the sense of deliberately putting something where it cannot be seen. The threat is already present along the path, even before it is encountered.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmūn: Hidden, concealed
טָמוּן
It shares the root’s sense of something present but out of sight, like the snare in this verse.
maṭmōn: Hidden treasure
מַטְמוֹן
This related word also carries the idea of something buried from view; here, what is concealed is a trap.
מוֹקְשִׁים
mōqĕshîm
GROWS FROM
יקש
y-q-sh
To lay a snare or catch in a trap.
“Gins” is an old English word for snares, and the Hebrew root keeps the image active: these are traps set to catch someone. Together with the hidden snare and the net, the verse describes danger arranged to close around a person.
ALSO GROWS
yāqōsh: To lay a snare
יָקֹשׁ
The verb names the act behind the “gins” set for the speaker.
mōqēsh: A snare, trap
מוֹקֵשׁ
This is the singular form of the word translated “gins,” making the trap’s mechanism visible in the Hebrew.
THE PATTERN
A snare catches a person before the danger becomes fully visible.
In the rebellion of an evil man is a snare, but the aligned sings and cries out in joy.Our living soul slips free like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we slip free.But those who want to be rich fall into testing and a snare, and into many mindless and harmful cravings, which sink people into ruin and the losing of the way.THE THREAD
Guard me from the snare they have set for me, and from the traps of the workers of crookedness.The Hebrew word behind “gins” echoes the same root for a snare in both verses. Here the traps are named; in the next psalm, the speaker asks to be kept from them.
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