Joshua 23:13

Snares and traps. Perhaps, rather, nets and snares. The LXX ; where our translation has snare, has παγίς , and for traps has incorrectly σκάνδαλα . The snare or pach was evidently ( Amos 3:5 ) laid upon the earth; but there is no evidence for Gesenius' idea that the mokesh which follows, there as here, means the stick of the trap, which when displaced involved the bird in the net. As the primary signification of this latter word, which is akin to קֶשֶׁת a bow, seems to mean something curved, it is probably a noose or springe. And the word and its cognates are used of involving, or catching, people by its use. Furst's Lexicon confirms this view, which has been independently arrived at. Scourges . The Hebrew word is in the singular. It is translated ἥλους , nails, in the LXX ; and offendiculum in the Vulgate. In your sides. Rather, on your sides. The words here are very similar to those in Numbers 33:55 . Moses, however, does but use two of the similes of which here we have four. He has, moreover, a different word ( שִׂכִּים ) for thorns, and the word here translated thorns is there substituted for scourges; "thorns in your sides." Joshua crowds together his similes "to describe the shame, and trouble, and oppression which they would bring upon themselves by joining in the idolatry of the Canaanites" (Keil). The Lord your God. Here, as elsewhere in this and many other passages, we have in the original, Jehovah your God. It is important to remember that the sacred writer is calling the God of Israel by His own proper name, that by which He was distinguished from the gods of the nations round about.