to trap: to set a hidden snare for someone, or to be caught in one
Behind this word stands a bird catcher: a trap baited, set, and left where the bird will not see it. Only Psalm 124:7 puts actual bird catchers on the page, and even there they appear in a comparison. Everywhere else the trap is a picture of ruin closing on someone who never saw it coming.
The word runs in two directions. Someone sets the trap, and someone falls into it. Both halves are here, and the second is far more common:
- Israel is warned that the silver and gold stripped off a conquered nation's idols will close on them (Deuteronomy 7:25)
- a man is taken by a promise he made too quickly, caught by the words of his own mouth (Proverbs 6:2)
- a whole people stumble, are broken, are snared and taken, in two oracles of judgment (Isaiah 8:15, Isaiah 28:13)
Who sets the trap matters. In Psalm 141:9 it is wicked men, hiding a snare for the one praying. In Jeremiah 50:24 it is the Lord himself, telling Babylon that he laid the trap and she was caught before she knew it. Even where no trapper is named, as in Ecclesiastes 9:12, the image is of something already set and waiting rather than a random accident.
In half of its occurrences the word stands right beside the plain verb for being captured (לָכַד): snared and taken, snared and taken. Once the trap has shut, the pairing says, there is no getting out. Hebrew keeps separate words for the trap itself, both the small baited kind (מוֹקֵשׁ) and the bird catcher's clap-net (פַּח); this word is the act, not the device.