Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 7:15
He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch [which] he made.
15. More exactly:
He hath dug a pit and delved it deep,
And is fallen into the ditch he was making.
Another picture of the destruction of the wicked. He ‘is snared in the work of his own hands’ (Psa 9:16). The figure is taken from the pitfalls used by hunters. See Eze 19:4; and cp. Psa 57:6; Ecc 10:8. Observe the graphic force of the tense in the last line. His schemes for the destruction of others prove his own ruin even before he has completed them.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
He made a pit – The allusion here is undoubtedly to a method of hunting wild beasts which was common in ancient times. It consists in digging a pit-fall, and covering it over with brush and grass so as to deceive the animals, and then enclosing them and driving them into it. See the notes at Isa 24:17.
And digged it – And hollowed it out so as to be large enough to contain his prey, and so deep that he could not escape if he fell into it. The idea is, that the enemy here referred to had laid a secret and artful plan to destroy others. He meant that they should not be aware of his plan until the mischief came suddenly upon them. He was preparing to ruin them, and supposed that he was certain of his prey.
And is fallen into the ditch which he made – Into the pit-fall which he had constructed for others; as if a man who had made a pit-fall for wild beasts had himself fallen into it, and could not extricate himself. That is, he had been snared in his own devices; his cunning had recoiled on himself, and instead of bringing ruin on others he had only managed to bring it on himself. See this sentiment illustrated in the notes at Job 5:13. A remarkable instance of the kind may be found in Esther (Est. 57), in the case of Haman. Indeed, such things are not uncommon in the world, where the cunning and the crafty are involved in the consequences of their own plans, and are taken in meshes from which they cannot free themselves. A straightforward course is easy, and men are safe in it; but it requires more skill than most men are endowed with to manage a crooked and crafty policy safely, or so as to be safe themselves in pursuing such a course. A spider will weave a web for flies with no danger to himself, for he is made for that, and acts as if he understood all the intricacies of his own web, and may move safely over it in every direction; but man was made to accomplish his purposes in an open and upright way, not by fraud and deceit; hence, when he undertakes a tortuous and crooked course – a plan of secret and scheming policy – in order to ruin others, it often becomes unmanageable by his own skill, or is suddenly sprung upon himself. No one can overvalue a straightforward course in its influence on our ultimate happiness; no one can overestimate the guilt and danger of a crooked and secret policy in devising plans of evil.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 7:15
He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
Social sappers
There is much among men of the particular sin rebuked in this text.
I. How this pit digging may be done. It may be done by attempting to lower a mans reputation. We are often guilty of talking in such a way that we lower people. The society papers live on this sort of thing. Scandal is a most, prominent form of the pit-digging business. It may be done by sapping a mans business. We have a general idea of what is fair and unfair within the world of trade. Now, some men steadily set themselves to ruin their neighbours business, thinking this essential to their own aggrandisement. You may do it by your capital, by your tongue, by your influence. Men sometimes seek to entice their neighbours into plausible and ruinous speculations. It may be done by endangering a mans character. Men will knowingly and designingly ruin their brother; they let them in to some sin or other. They will do this for the sake of gain, for a companionship in guilt, and sometimes out of a mere delight in iniquity. Sometimes we dig a pit for others when we do not think of all that we are doing. We have no right to lay snares, nor to put an occasion of stumbling in our brothers way. If our brother shows a tendency to slide we must not grease his path.
II. Characterise this work of pit digging.
1. It is dark work; it has to be done secretly, under cover of night: to be done softly, to be wrapped up. Let us decline all that kind of work in which we should be ashamed for society to see us. The great motto of Positivism is, Live without concealment. So live that you would not care if your house were glass. Let us decline all that work we should shrink from bringing under the eye of God.
2. It is dirty work, ignoble, base, disgraceful. Whatever aims to lower men is of this character. Such conduct involves only base qualities. Sometimes it is prompted by covetousness. Or it springs from envy or from revenge; or from mere levity. Pit diggers may be well dressed, but their work is of a far dirtier kind than that of the delver in the earth.
3. It is dismal work. All the true work of life has a joy in it, but there is no brightness or blessing in letting people down. It is a joyless thing to be a gravedigger among living men: to dig graves for mens reputations. Lighthouse building is better than pit sinking. Let our life be devoted to the uplifting of men.
4. It is degrading work. As soon as you begin to dig you stoop, and whatever progress you make you sink with your work. All true work resembles the work of the builder. If in conversation we talk down others, if that is our habit and pleasure, we talk ourselves down at the same time, whether we know it or not. As George Sand says, Insults, harsh words, detractive utterances, kill morally those who give expression to them. You narrow and debase your own thought and feeling, you wrong your own soul. If the spirit of our life is sympathy, and if we find readily and praise readily whatever is good, beautiful, clever, successful in the work of our fellows, we are really nourishing and promoting our intellect in an eminent degree. And so in our business life. It was said to me concerning one of the richest men in Bradford, He has made more gentlemen than any man in Bradford. That is the way, so to rise that you lift others up with you. The whole idea of the New Testament is, that a noble life is devoted to raising ones fellow men. This was the grand task of the Master. He was constantly raising what was fallen. (W. L. Watkinson.)
The self-avenging power of sin
The man that travaileth with iniquity, who is big with thoughts and purposes of evil, shall experience, as the issue of his birth throes, nothing but mischief and falsehood, misery and disappointment. Sin is a thing that recoils upon its perpetrator, and inflicts its heaviest blows upon the soul conceiving it, intending it, and giving it life and form. It was in accordance with this self-avenging power of sin that Saul was slain by the Philistines (1Sa 31:2-4), whom he had designed to be slayers of David (1Sa 18:21; 1Sa 18:25); that Haman was hanged upon the gallows he had erected for another (Est 7:10); and that the Jews themselves were destroyed by the Romans, whose aid they had invoked and received to crucify their Messiah. This recoiling, self-avenging power of sin is conclusive proof that a holy, just, and living God is moving everywhere in nature, and in the affairs of men, to paralyse the arm of the evil-doer, and to make man feel in every blow that he inflicts upon truth and right, upon innocence and virtue, a counter blow of overwhelming force. It is the conviction of this great truth, as a principle permeating the government of God, that makes David speak of the discomfiture of his enemies as a thing already accomplished. He sees every blow aimed at him recoiling upon themselves; every machination concocted for his overthrow, rendering their own still more inevitable. A fearful thought this, to the wicked, that his own evil shall slay him; and yet, to others, a thought full of hope, that God has so ordered things in His universe that evil must destroy itself. (David Caldwell, A. M.)
Retribution
The story of Phalariss bull, invented for the torment of others, and serving afterwards for himself, is notorious in heathen story It was a voluntary judgment which Archbishop Cranmer inflicted on himself when he thrust that very hand into the fire, and burnt it, with which he had signed to the popish articles, crying out, Oh, my unworthy right hand! but who will deny that the hand of the Almighty was also concerned in it? (William Turner.)
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Psa 8:1-9
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. He made a pit] He determined the destruction of David. He laid his plans with much artifice; he executed them with zeal and diligence; and when he had, as he supposed, the grave of David digged, he fell into it himself! The metaphor is taken from pits dug in the earth, and slightly covered over with reeds, c., so as not to be discerned from the solid ground but the animal steps on them, the surface breaks, and he falls into the pit and is taken. “All the world agrees to acknowledge the equity of that sentence, which inflicts upon the guilty the punishment intended by them for the innocent.” – Horne.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Hath brought that evil upon himself which he intended against me; which may be understood either of Saul, who whilst he plotted against Davids life ran into apparent hazard of losing his own, 1Sa 24; 1Sa 26; or of some courtier or courtiers of Saul, in whom this was evidently verified, although the history and memory of it be now lost.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15, 16. 1Sa 18:17;1Sa 31:2 illustrate the statementwhether alluded to or not. These verses are expository of Ps7:14, showing how the devices of the wicked end indisappointment, falsifying their expectations.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
He made a pit and digged it,…. That is, he digged a pit, and made it very large and capacious, to answer his purposes;
and is fallen into the ditch [which] he made; so it is said of the Heathen, Ps 9:15; and is exemplified in the case of Haman, who was hanged upon the gallows he had built for Mordecai. Kimchi explains this of Saul’s falling upon his own sword, and dying by it, which he drew against David; phrase is proverbial, Pr 26:27; the sense of this and the above figurative expressions is literally and properly given in Ps 7:16.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Here David says not only that their wicked devices were without success, but that, by the wonderful providence of God, the result was the very opposite of what had been contemplated. He sets this forth in the first place metaphorically, by employing the figure of a pit and a ditch; and then he expresses the same thing in simple terms without figure, declaring, that the mischief intended for others returned upon the head of him who had devised it There is no doubt that it was a common proverb among the Jews, He who hath digged a pit falleth into it; which they quoted when they meant to say, that wicked and crafty men are caught in the snares and traps which they have set for others, or that the contrivers of the ruin of others perish by their own devices. (126) There is a twofold use of this doctrine: the first place, however skilled in craft our enemies may be, and whatever means of doing mischief they may have, we must nevertheless look for the issue which God here promises, that they shall fall by their own sword. And this is not a thing which happens by chance; but God, by the secret direction of his own hand, causes the evil which they intend to bring upon the innocent to return upon their own heads. In the second place, If at any time we are instigated by passion to inflict any injury upon our neighbours, or to commit any wickedness, let us remember this principle of retributive justice, which is often acted upon by the divine government, that those who prepare a pit for others are cast into it themselves; and the effect will be, that every one, in proportion as he would consult his own happiness and welfare, will be careful to restrain himself from doing any injury, even the smallest, to another.
(126) “ Tomboyent au mal qu’ils avoyent brasse.”— Fr. “Fall into the destruction which they had contrived.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(15) He hath made.Better, he digged a pit, and hollowed it out. Milton: He digged a pit, and delved it deep.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(15) Pate.A word retained from Coverdales translation, and common in the Elizabethan age. In Shakespeare it is frequent
My invention
Comes from my pate,
As bird-lime does from frieze.
For the moral, comp. 1Sa. 25:29.
Psa. 7:15-16 are quoted by Eusebius of the overthrow of Maxentius by Constantine, with special reference to the fact that in preparing a bridge of boats he had prepared the means for his own destruction.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 7:15. He made a pit, &c. This is a proverbial mode of speech often used in Scripture: it is taken from pits which are digged and then covered with the leaves of trees, or some such unstable materials, either to make men fall into them, as in the time of war; or else wild beasts, who are hunted into them.
REFLECTIONS.1. This Psalm opens with David’s professed dependance upon God. O Lord, my God, in whom I have a sure interest, and who art bound to me in the tenderest relation, in thee do I put my trust, at all times, and under all difficulties. Note; They who continue thus to make God their refuge, can never be moved.
2. He cries to God to save him from the malice of his persecutors; strong and cruel as a lion, they threatened to tear him in pieces; and he was without help in himself, or a friend to protect him. Note; When we are weak, then are we strong; the farther all human dependance is removed, the more shall we be led to rely on God alone.
3. He appeals to God for the innocence that there was in him respecting the things laid to his charge. Note; (1.) It is an unspeakable comfort, under the world’s malignant aspersions, to be conscious of our own innocence. (2.) However wicked men may strive to blacken us, we have a God to appeal to, the protector of the injured; and he will shortly make our righteousness appear as the light, and our just dealings as the noon-day.
4. Having lodged his appeal with God, he looks up to him as the righteous judge.
5. He prays, O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, either by their conversion, and forsaking their evil ways, or by the final coming of that blessed kingdom, where sin can never enter: but establish the just, or the righteous man, meaning himself, and including every believer who is justified by faith in Christ, and made righteous by the Spirit of grace. He begs that God would establish them in every divine and gracious disposition; that they may be strengthened with might in the inner man, and enabled to persevere unshaken: and in confidence of this he rests satisfied; for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins, discovers his enemies through every veil of hypocrisy, and knoweth them that are his, though compassed with infirmity, and is convinced of their simplicity and godly sincerity before him. Note; It is a blessed thing when we can with comfort regard the righteous God as the searcher of hearts.
6. Having committed his cause to God, he concludes,
(1.) His deliverance sure. My defence, says he, is of God, or, my shield is of God: he will cover me as safely as under a shield from the arrows of my enemies: which saveth the upright; they are sure of his protection; and God judgeth the righteous, is a righteous judge; and therefore they who approve themselves before him, may be assured that he will vindicate them from every accusation. Note; Out of God’s favour there is no safety; in it, no danger.
(2.) His enemies’ destruction is certain, unless they repent: for God is angry with the wicked every day, he marks their continual provocations, and especially that radical enmity of heart, which is ever working within, to bring forth fruit unto death. If he turn not, he will whet his sword: God delighteth not in the death of a sinner; however great his provocations, when he returns to God, God will turn from the fierceness of his wrath against him. How should such goodness lead us to repentance! But, if he persists, his ruin lies at his own door; he has rejected his own mercies, and must perish in his iniquity. God’s glittering sword is whetting for judgment; the arrow of death is fitting to the string; and all his instruments of vengeance ready; and shall we despise the longsuffering of our God? Sinner, tremble at thy aggravated guilt, and seize the moment which mercy prolongs, lest slighted patience provoke implacable vengeance. Let the persecutors of God’s people especially be warned; on them he will empty his quiver.
(3.) All the mischievous devices of the sinner are vain, and can end but in his own ruin: the conceptions of his devilish wisdom will prove abortive; into the pit that he digged for others, himself shall fall; and all the evils which he meditated against the innocent recoil upon his own head, and overwhelm him with misery insupportable.
(4.) David concludes with his grateful tribute of praise due for these righteous acts of the Lord. Every instance of such divine interposition shall minister to him constant matter for a song of thanksgiving to the Lord most High. Note; They who are kept ever trusting, will be ever praising.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 7:15 He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch [which] he made.
Ver. 15. He made a pit, and digged it, &c. ] This simile shows, that the wicked shall not only be frustrated, but undone by their own doing; as was Absalom, Haman, our gunpowder Papists, Pope Alexander VI, and his son Caesar Borgia (Bucholcer); who, by a mistake of the attendants at table, drank up the poisoned wine which they had prepared and set ready for some princes of Italy whom they had invited, and for whose dominions they thirsted. Hic aut Caesar ut nullus, saith Pontanus, who relateth the history.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 7:15-16
Psa 7:15-16
“He hath made a pit, and digged it.
And is fallen into the ditch which he made.
His mischief shall return upon his own head,
And his violence shall come down upon his own pate.”
Haman made a gallows upon which he planned to hang Mordecai, but it was Haman himself who was hanged there; and many another wicked man has experienced exactly the same kind of retribution.
It is of interest that Spurgeon in his “Treasury of David” interpreted these lines of God Himself; but the words “If a man turn not” in Psa 7:12, it seems to this writer, require the understanding of the passage as indicated here.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 7:15-16. A wicked man may become the victim of his own device. See the case of Haman in Est 5:14; Est 7:10.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
made: Heb. hath digged, Psa 35:7, Psa 119:85, Job 6:27, Jer 18:20
and is: Psa 9:15, Psa 9:16, Psa 10:2, Psa 35:8, Psa 94:13, Psa 140:9, Psa 140:10, Psa 141:10, Est 7:10, Job 4:8, Pro 5:22, Pro 26:27, Ecc 10:8, Ecc 10:9
Reciprocal: 1Sa 17:51 – his sword 2Sa 17:11 – in thine 1Ki 21:19 – In the place 2Ki 16:8 – to the king Est 7:9 – Behold Job 5:13 – taketh Psa 37:15 – sword Psa 55:23 – O God Psa 57:6 – a net Pro 11:27 – he that seeketh Pro 28:10 – he shall Act 5:37 – he also 1Co 3:19 – He
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 7:15-16. He made a pit, &c. This is a proverbial manner of speech often used in Scripture. It is taken from pits which are digged, and then covered with the leaves of trees, or some such unstable materials, either to make men fall into them, or else wild beasts, which are hunted into them. And is fallen into the ditch which he made He hath brought that evil upon himself which he intended against others. His mischief shall return upon his own head All the world agrees to acknowledge the equity of that sentence which inflicts upon the guilty the punishment intended by them for the innocent. No one pities the fate of a man buried in that pit which he had dug to receive his neighbour; or of him who owes his death wound to the return of an arrow shot against heaven. Saul was overthrown by those Philistines whom he would have made the instruments of cutting off David. Haman was hanged on his own gallows. The Jews, who excited the Romans to crucify Christ, were themselves, by the Romans, crucified in crowds. Striking instances these of the vengeance to be one day executed on all tempters and persecutors of others; when men and angels shall lift up their voices and cry out together, Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments.