paḥ

This is the ordinary Hebrew word for a bird-catcher's trap, the concealed device that springs shut the instant a bird lands on it. The picture is of sudden, total, inescapable capture: one moment free, the next moment caught with no warning.

The Bible reaches for this image constantly to describe danger to a person. A plot laid by enemies, a temptation, a treaty with a hostile nation, even a table set out as a feast can all be called a snare, because each one closes on its victim before he sees it coming. The word carries a chill of ambush, not slow entanglement.

It becomes a favorite tool of the prophets and poets. Isaiah and Jeremiah build a famous three-word chain of terror, pit, and trap to say that escape is impossible: flee the first and you fall into the next. God himself can be called a snare to those who reject him, and the faithful pray to be kept from the traps set for their feet.

In two places the same spelling names something entirely different: a thin plate of metal beaten out flat with a hammer. It has nothing to do with a bird-trap; it is simply an identical-looking word with a separate history.

Both uses come from the sanctuary. Gold is hammered into thin sheets and cut into threads for the priestly garments, and the bronze censers of Korah's rebels are pounded into broad plates to overlay the altar. The idea is metal spread out flat by beating, which some scholars think is the thread of meaning it once shared with the trap word, though in practice the two are used as separate words.