The proud have dug pits for me, which is not after your law.
Read Chapter 119
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
85. In what followeth: "The wicked have told me pleasant tales: but not like Thy law, O Lord" (ver. 85): the Latin translators have endeavoured to render the Greek adoleskiaj, which cannot be expressed in one Latin word, so that some have rendered it "delights," and others "fablings," so that we must understand to be meant some kind of compositions, but in discourse of a nature to give pleasure. Both secular literature, and the Jewish book entitled Deuterosis, containing besides the canon of divine Scripture thousands of tales, comprise these in their different sects and professions; the vain and wandering loquacity of heretics holds them also. All these he wished to be considered as wicked, by whom he saith that adolesxiai were related to him, that is, compositions which gave pleasure solely in their style: "But not," he addeth, "as Thy law, O Lord;" because truth, not words, pleases me therein.
Fables. Idle tales, not agreeable to God's law. (Worthington)
Such were the theology and histories of the pagans. (Calmet)
Such are still the false maxims of the world, and many books designed to corrupt the morals of the age. (Haydock)
The Jews confined themselves to their own divine books. Hebrew, Chaldean, "The proud have dug pits for me, which is not conformable to thy law "(Calmet) but forbidden expressly. (Haydock)
The Septuagint seem to have followed a better reading. (Calmet)
Houbigant rejects the word pits, and in effect, we may understand the Hebrew in the sense of the Vulgate, "They have prepared (or told me) vain discourses. "(Berthier)
