Today’s verse is a crystal clear statement about God’s Law of “Reaping What You Sow.”
What Paul later wrote in Galatians 6:7-8, for example. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
Amen.
So now, Psalm 7:15, about the wicked man. “He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.” Yes, he got what he deserved!
By the way, he made the pit as a “trap,” so someone else (his enemy) would fall into it! We used to say … “That ‘backfired,’ didn’t it?”
David has in mind, as he writes Psalm 7, a lying, murderous man named Cush. Who is seeking David’s harm, even death! David our Poet is pretty sure the man Cush is engineering his own downfall!
The word “pit” means a “hole” in the ground. It can at times just mean “well” or “cistern,” but here it’s more nefarious. Actually it’s later called a “ditch” in our verse, “shathath” being rendered as “grave” twice in Scripture. (As in: “Digging his own grave!”)
The verb “digged” means just what it says, what it implies, but once in the King James Version it is translated “pawed.” In Job 39:21 where a beautiful old war-horse is “pawing” in the valley, eager to go to battle!
And “fallen” is spelled (in Hebrew) “naphal,” five times meaning “overthrown,” in the Old Testament of course.
“He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.”
Have you ever heard this old saying? “Give him enough rope and he will hang himself!” That’s what the wicked man is doing in Psalm 7:15, exactly.
Other parts of the Bible teach the same truth as our verse today.
Psalm 9:15-16 sure does. “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands.” Wow!
And this Bible prayer says the same thing. “The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.” Psalm 10:2
One more example: “Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape.” Psalm 141:10
What a “healthy” view of retribution!
Do NOT harm your enemy.
Let God take care of everything, in His time.
In Deuteronomy 32:35 God thunders: “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”
Enough has been said.
— Dr. Mike Bagwell