Psalm 119:85

We are working our way through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Caph.  In this octave the psalmist is obviously experiencing prolonged stress with no relief in sight.  In the foregoing verse we saw that the source of this stress was persecution.  In today’s verse we find the psalmist’s persecutors identified as the proud.

Psalms 119:85  The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law.

In previous verses, which we have already considered, we saw the psalmist being troubled by the proud.  Recall that the proud are those that are so full of themselves that they defy Almighty God and His servants.  They will reject and resist anyone that crosses their will. 

The proud had had him “greatly in derision” (verse 51).  They mocked him.  They had “forged a lie against” him (verse 69).  They invented falsehoods against him.  And he wrote:  “they dealt perversely with me without a cause” (verse 78).  They did not treat him right.  Now we find the proud digged pits for him.

The proud were obviously out to get the psalmist.  Something about his life exposed them in such a way that they had to rid themselves of him.  So they digged pits for him.  They deliberately, with malice aforethought, devised ways to trap the psalmist.  And they didn’t just dig one pit; they digged pits, plural.  They made numerous and varied attempts to trap him, first digging a pit here and then another there thinking he would surely stumble into one of them.  This reminds us of the attempts made by the scribes and Pharisees to entrap our Lord in His words so they could have some cause against Him.    

Luke 11:53  And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things:

54    Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.

The pits that the proud digged for the psalmist were not after thy law.  God’s law warns us against devising evil against our neighbour.

Proverbs 3:29  Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee.

God’s law commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves rather than trying to destroy him.  So any such pit as the proud were digging was not after God’s law. 

But, alas, the proud who dig pits for the righteous will themselves fall into the pits they have dug.  So that we may say, when you set out to destroy someone else who has done you no wrong, you are really digging your own grave.

Psalms 57:6  They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah.

Proverbs 26:27  Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.

In contrast to the pit-digging proud, let us rejoice with thanksgiving for our humble and lowly Saviour Who came into this world, not to dig a pit for us, but to deliver us from the pit.

Psalms 40:2  He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

John 3:17  For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.