What Does Psalm 141:9 Mean?
Guard me from the snare they have set for me, and from the traps of the workers of crookedness.
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
Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity.THE KEY
The prayer places a watchful guard between you and a trap already set in secret.
THE MEANING
A hidden trap can be active around you before its mechanism is visible. This prayer names the danger plainly and asks for guarding from the people who set it.
THE ROOT
מֹקְשׁוֹת
moqeshot
GROWS FROM
יקש
y-q-sh
To ensnare or lay a snare.
“traps” in this verse is moqeshot. The trap and the one who sets it belong to the same root family: the snare is the trap-setter’s work made into an object. The prayer asks to be kept from an intentional mechanism, not danger in the abstract.
ALSO GROWS
moqesh: A snare or trap.
מוֹקֵשׁ
This singular form names the danger the plural gins describe.
yoqesh: A fowler or one who sets snares.
יוֹקֵשׁ
The root joins the hidden mechanism with the person actively laying it.
שָׁמְרֵנִי
shomreni
GROWS FROM
שמר
sh-m-r
To guard, watch over, or keep.
“guard me” in this verse is shomreni. The request to be kept carries the sense of being watched over. This root connects protection with attention: guarding means staying watchful over what is entrusted to you.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: A watcher or guardian.
שֹׁמֵר
It gives the protective request a person-shaped image: someone keeping watch.
mishmeret: A watch, guard, or charge.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
It shows that the root can name both the act of guarding and the watch maintained.
THE PATTERN
When danger is laid as a hidden snare, protection and deliverance can reach where the threatened person cannot see.
For he snatches you from the snare of the bird-catcher, from the plague of ruin.For nothing, the net is spread out in the eyes of every winged thing.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
Our living soul slips free like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we slip free.The Hebrew for the fowlers here, יוֹקְשִׁים (yoqshim, those who set snares), shares the root יקש (yaqash, ensnare) with the gins in this verse. Psalm 124 gives the other image in the same root family: the snare breaks, and the trapped life escapes.
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