What Does Romans 11:9 Mean?
And David says, Let their table become a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a repayment to them.
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
And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them:THE KEY
The table becomes a hunting ground: what should sustain them catches them, and its consequence comes back to them.
THE MEANING
The verse places a hard truth before you now: provision can become a point of capture. What catches you becomes a stumbling and returns its consequence to you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that whatever sustains you is automatically harmless: provision itself can become a trap, and its consequence can return to its receiver.
THE ROOT
θήραν
thēran
GROWS FROM
θηρ
thēr
Hunting or catching; the pursuit and capture of prey.
The word translated “trap” carries the sense of a hunt or catch. The table is not only where provision sits: it becomes the place where its recipients are caught.
ALSO GROWS
thēra: Hunting, catch, or snare
θήρα
It gives the trap the force of a hunt: the table becomes the site of capture.
thēreuō: To hunt or catch
θηρεύω
The related verb makes the capture active, the provision becomes what catches its recipient.
σκάνδαλον
skandalon
GROWS FROM
σκανδαλ-
skandal-
A snare’s trigger or an obstruction that catches and causes a fall.
“stumblingblock” in this verse is skandalon. The Greek word can hold both the trap and the stumble: what catches you is also what brings you down. The verse’s successive images describe one mechanism from capture to fall.
ALSO GROWS
skandalon: Snare trigger, stumbling block, or cause of a fall
σκάνδαλον
It joins entrapment and stumbling in one word, so the table is both the catch and the fall.
skandalizō: To cause to stumble or entrap
σκανδαλίζω
The related verb shows the stumbling block as something that actively brings a person down.
ἀνταπόδομα
antapodoma
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
To give; with the surrounding word forms, to give back or render in return.
“repayment” in this verse is antapodoma. The final word brings the catch back to the person caught: the table’s consequence is given in return. What began as provision ends as a return they receive.
ALSO GROWS
apodidōmi: To give back, render, or repay
ἀποδίδωμι
It makes the sense of return explicit: what is due is given back.
antapodidōmi: To repay or return in kind
ἀνταποδίδωμι
Its “in return” sense illuminates the verse’s closing movement from trap to recompense.
THE PATTERN
What is received as provision can become the snare that catches its recipient and returns a consequence.
Let their table become a snare before them, and their wholeness a trap.And they lie in wait for their own blood; they hide for their own living souls.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
Let their table become a snare before them, and their wholeness a trap.Romans names David’s line, and Psalm 69 shows the same reversal with one added phrase: what should have been for their welfare becomes a trap. The catch arises inside what was meant to sustain them.
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