Word study

Trap

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: trap, trapped. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “trap” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מוֹקֵשׁ môqêsha bait or luretranslated this way 4 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s H4170Noun  ·  Translated: snare 13, snares 5, trap 3, lures 2

    Joshua 23:13 know for sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the LORD your God has given you.

    Psalm 69:22 May their table become a snare; may it be a retribution and a trap.

    Full study and all 27 verses →
  • לָכַד lâkadcapture, seize, take (by lot)translated this way 3 times of its 120 uses · Strong’s H3920Verb  ·  Translated: captured 62, capture 12, selected 9, caught 8

    Psalm 59:12 By the sins of their mouths and the words of their lips, let them be trapped in their pride, in the curses and lies they utter.

    Proverbs 11:6 The righteousness of the upright delivers them, but the faithless are trapped by their own desires.

    Full study and all 112 verses →
  • פַּח pachbird-traptranslated this way 3 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s H6341Noun  ·  Translated: snare 16, snares 4, trap 3

    Job 18:9 A trap seizes his heel; a snare grips him.

    Isaiah 8:14 And He will be a sanctuary — but to both houses of Israel a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, to the dwellers of Jerusalem a trap and a snare.

    Full study and all 25 verses →
  • תָּפַשׂ tâphaslay hold of, wieldtranslated this way 2 times of its 64 uses · Strong’s H8610Verb  ·  Translated: seized 8, captured 7, take 4, Seize 4

    Ezekiel 19:4 When the nations heard of him, he was trapped in their pit. With hooks they led him away to the land of Egypt.

    Ezekiel 19:8 Then the nations set out against him from the provinces on every side. They spread their net over him; he was trapped in their pit.

    Full study and all 60 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

What the Bible says about trap: passages by topic →

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.