Bible Dictionary
ENTANGLE
To become physically caught, mentally ensnared, morally involved, or spiritually enslaved. Scripture warns believers not to return to bondage or become absorbed in worldly affairs.
Definition
To entangle is to become physically caught, mentally ensnared, morally involved, or spiritually enslaved. The idea includes perplexity, captivity, and renewed bondage.
Biblical Usage
Israel was said to be entangled in the wilderness; Jesus’ opponents sought to entangle Him in speech; and Christians are warned not to become involved in worldly affairs or return to former bondage and defilement.
Historical Background
The biblical examples use different images: a maze, a bird snare, intertwined material, fetters, and thorns folded together. These images emphasize confusion, involvement, and captivity.
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>en-tan'-g'-l:</p><p>Found but 5 times in the Scriptures (the King James Version), once in the Old Testament, yet most significant as illustrating the process of mental, moral and spiritual confusion and enslavement.</p><p><em>(1) Physical:</em></p><p>Used of physical entanglement, as in the mazes of a labyrinth (bukh, to involve, "be perplexed"). At Moses' command the children of Israel, before crossing the Red Sea, took the wrong way in order to give Pharaoh the impression that they were lost in the wilderness and cause him to say "They are entangled in the land" (Ex 14:3).</p><p><em>(2) Mental:</em></p><p>pagideuo, "to entrap," "ensnare," with words, as birds are caught in a snare; compare Ec 9:12. The Pharisees sought to "entangle" (the Revised Version (British and American) "ensnare") Jesus in His talk (Mt 22:15).</p><p><em>(3) Moral:</em></p><p>`empleko, "to inweave," hence, intertwine and involve. "A god soldier of Jesus Christ," says Paul, does not "entangle himself," i.e. become involved, "in the affairs of this life" (2Ti 2:4). Having "escaped the defilements of the world," Christians are not to be "again entangled therein" (2Pe 2:20).</p><p><em>(4) Spiritual:</em></p><p>enecho, "to hold in," hence, to hold captive, as a slave in fetters or under a burden. Having experienced spiritual emancipation, freedom, through Christ from bondage to sin and false religion (Ga 5:1; compare Ga 4:8), the Gentiles were not to become "entangled again in a yoke of bondage" by submission to mere legal requirements, as the external rite of circumcision.</p><p>With reference to the thoroughness and irresistibleness of God's judgments, we read in Na 1:10, "For entangled like thorns" (the King James Version "while they be folden together as thorns"), damp, closely packed and intertwined, "they are consumed utterly as dry stubble" (the King James Version "devoured as stubble fully dry").</p><p>Dwight M. Pratt</p>