| 9. Linguistic Exegesis The verse is arranged as two terse poetic cola with escalating restraint. The first colon opens verb-initial with yoahez {יֹאחֵז | yōʾḥēz} ‘will seize’, delaying the subject pakh {פָּח | pāḥ} ‘trap’ until after the prepositional phrase beaqev {בְּעָקֵב | bə-ʿā-qēḇ} ‘by a heel’, creating surprise and vividness as the capture is pictured before the captor is named. The second colon mirrors the first: yakhazek {יַחֲזֵק | yaḥă-zēq} ‘will hold fast’ is followed by alav {עָלָיו | ʿā-lāw} ‘upon him’ and then the subject tsamim {צַמִּים | tsam-mîm} ‘snares’, intensifying from a single “trap” to multiple restraints. The imperfect verbs function as gnomic-future description within Bildad’s portrayal of the wicked person’s inevitable downfall, presenting entrapment as a predictable outcome rather than a one-time event. The English rendering keeps the parallel structure while supplying the implicit direct object (“him”) with the first verb to maintain clarity in a natural target-language clause. |