What Does Psalm 9:15 Mean?
The nations sink into the pit they made; in the net they hid, their own foot is caught.
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 heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.THE KEY
What is hidden to catch another becomes the very thing that catches its maker.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks as a present pattern: a person or people can sink into the harm they construct, and their own step can be caught by what they concealed. The consequence takes the shape of the act itself: a pit they made, a net they hid, a foot of their own.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hiding a harmful plan keeps its maker safe; the net can catch the foot that concealed it.
THE ROOT
נִלְכְּדָה
nilkedah
GROWS FROM
לכד
to catch, seize, capture
The verse’s word for the foot being caught comes from לכד (lakad, to capture), a root that also forms מִלְכֹּדֶת (milkōdet, snare). The trap’s purpose and the foot’s fate share one word-family: the catch built into the scheme catches its maker.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: to catch, seize, capture
לָכַד
This is the verb behind the foot being taken: the foot is captured by the net.
milkōdet: snare, trap
מִלְכֹּדֶת
The same root names a trap, joining the device that catches to the act of being caught.
טָמָנוּ
tamanu
GROWS FROM
טמן
to hide, conceal, bury
טָמָנוּ (tamanu, they hid) grows from טמן (taman, to conceal), a family that also names what is hidden and even hidden treasure. The root describes concealment; here the hidden thing is a net, and what is kept out of sight becomes the route into capture.
ALSO GROWS
ṭamun: hidden, concealed
טָמוּן
It makes the act of hiding visible as a state: the net is concealed until a foot enters it.
matmon: hidden treasure
מַטְמוֹן
The same root can name something concealed as treasure; here the concealed thing is a net, showing how context gives hiddenness its force.
THE PATTERN
Harm prepared for another can return through the very design that set it in motion.
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.So they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king's heat settled.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Let ruin come upon him without knowing it, and let the net he hid seize him; into that very pit of ruin let him fall.Psalm 35:8 uses the same Hebrew roots, טמן (taman, hide) and לכד (lakad, catch), for the hidden net and its capture. The repeated roots make the reversal explicit: the concealed net catches the one who hid it.
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