Albert Barnes Commentary Job 18:10

"A noose is hid for him in the ground, And a trap for him in the way." — Job 18:10 (ASV)

The snare is laid — All this language is taken from the methods of capturing wild animals, but it is not possible to designate with absolute certainty the methods by which it was done. The word used here (חבל chebel) means a cord or rope, and then a snare or gin, such as hunters use. It was used in some way as a noose to secure an animal. This was concealed (Hebrew) in the earth — so covered up that an animal would not perceive it, and so constructed that it might be made to spring upon it suddenly.

And a trap — We have no reason to suppose that at that time they employed steel to construct traps as we do now, or that the word here has exactly the sense which we give to it. The Hebrew word (מלכדת malkôdeth) is from לכד lâkad — “to take,” “to catch” — and means a noose, snare, or spring by which an animal was seized.

It is a general term, though undoubtedly used to denote a particular instrument then well known. The general idea in all this is that the wicked man would be suddenly seized by calamities, as a wild animal or a bird is taken in a snare. Independently of the interest of the entire passage (Job 18:8–10) as a part of Bildad’s argument, it is interesting for the view it gives of the method of securing wild animals in the early periods of the world. They had no guns as we have, but they early learned the art of setting gins and snares by which they were taken.

In illustrating this passage, it will not be inappropriate to refer to some of the methods of hunting practiced by the ancient Egyptians. The same methods were practiced then in catching birds and capturing wild animals as now, and there is little novelty in modern practices. The ancients had not only traps, nets, and springs, but also bird-lime smeared upon twigs, and made use of stalking-horses, setting dogs, etc. The various methods by which this was done may be seen described at length in Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii, pp. 1–81. The noose was employed to catch the wild ox, the antelope, and other animals.

This seems to be a self-acting net, so constructed that the birds, when coming in contact with it, close it upon themselves.

This trap appears as if in a vertical position, although, doubtless, it is intended to represent a trap lying upon the ground.

There are other traps very similar to this, except that they are oval and probably have a net like the former. They are composed of two arcs, which, being kept open by machinery in the middle, provide the oval frame of the net; but when the bird flies in and knocks out the pin in the center, the arcs collapse, enclosing the bird in the net. One instance occurs in a painting at Thebes of a trap in which a hyena is caught and carried on the shoulders of two men.

It was a common method of hunting to enclose a large tract of land with a circle of nets, or to station men at convenient distances and gradually contract the circle by moving closer to each other, thus driving all the wild animals into a narrow enclosure where they could be easily slain. Some idea of the extent of these enclosures may be formed from the by no means incredible circumstance related by Plutarch: that when the Macedonian conquerors were in Persia, Philotos, the son of Armenio, had hunting nets that would enclose the space of a hundred furlongs. The Oriental sovereigns have sometimes employed whole armies in this species of hunting. Picture Bible.