He that digs a pit shall fall into it; and whosoever breaks through a wall, a serpent shall bite him.
All Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 10:8 Go To Ecclesiastes 10
Athanasius the Apostolic
AD 373
The Jews in their imaginings, and in their agreeing to act unjustly against the Lord, forgot that they were bringing wrath upon themselves. Therefore does the Word lament for them saying, “Why do the people exalt themselves, and the nations imagine vain things?” For vain indeed was the imagination of the Jews, meditating death against the Life, and devising unreasonable things against the Word of the Father. For who that looks upon their dispersion, and the desolation of their city, may not aptly say, “Woe unto them, for they have imagined an evil imagination, saying against their own soul, let us bind the righteous man, because he is not pleasing to us.” And full well it is so, my brethren; for when they erred concerning the Scriptures, they knew not that “he who digs a pit for his neighbor falls into it; and he who destroys a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.” And if they had not turned their faces from the Lord, they would have feared what was written before in the divine Psalms: “The heathen are caught in the pit which they made; in the snare which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known when executing judgments: by the works of his hands is the sinner taken.”
