Entangle
en-tang’l: 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.
1. Physical
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 (Exo 14:3).
2. Mental
, pagideuo, to entrap, ensnare, with words, as birds are caught in a snare; compare Ecc 9:12. The Pharisees sought to entangle (the Revised Version (British and American) ensnare) Jesus in His talk (Mat 22:15).
3. Moral
, 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).
4. Spiritual
, 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 (Gal 5:1; compare Gal 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.
With reference to the thoroughness and irresistibleness of God’s judgments, we read in Nah 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).
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Entangle
see ENSNARE.
“to weave in” (en, “in,” pleko, “to weave”), hence, metaphorically, to be involved, entangled in, is used in the Passive Voice in 2Ti 2:4, “entangleth himself;” 2Pe 2:20, “are entangled.” In the Sept., Pro 28:18.
“to hold in,” is said (a) of being “entangled” in a yoke of bondage, such as Judaism, Gal 5:1. Some mss. have the word in 2Th 1:4, the most authentic have anecho, “to endure;” (b) with the meaning to set oneself against, be urgent against, said of the plotting of Herodias against John the Baptist, Mar 6:19, RV, “set herself against,” AV, “had a quarrel against;” of the effort of the scribes and Pharisees to provoke the Lord to say something which would provide them with a ground of accusation against Him, Luk 11:53, RV, “to press upon,” marg., “to set themselves vehemently against,” AV, “to urge.”