Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.
Read Chapter 69
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
24. "And they gave for My food gall, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink" (ver. 22). This was done indeed to the letter. And the Gospel declareth this to us. But we must understand, brethren, that the very fact that I found not comforters, that the very fact that I found not one that together should be made sorrowful, this was My gall, this to Me was bitter, this was vinegar: bitter because of grief, vinegar because of their old man. For we read, that to Him indeed gall was offered, as the Gospel speaketh; but for drink, not for food. Nevertheless, we must so take and consider that when fulfilled, which here had been before predicted, "They gave for My food gall:" and in that very action, not only in this saying, we ought to seek for a mystery, at secret things to knock, to enter the rent veil of the Temple, to see there a Sacrament, both in what there hath been said and in what there hath been done. "They gave," He saith, "for My food gall:" not the thing itself which they ...
Let their table What here follows in the style of an imprecation, is a prophecy of the wretched state to which the Jews should be reduced, in punishment of their wilful obstinacy; (Challoner) or it may be a sentence pronounced on them by Jesus Christ. They are driven from their own country, and the sacred books (Calmet) being misunderstood, (Menochius) prove their ruin. Our Saviour and St. Paul confirm this prediction. The latter adheres to the Septuagint (Romans xi. 9.) though some would translate lishlomim, "for peace"-offerings, instead of recompenses, as it also means. (Berthier)
"Let their sacrifices become a scandal to them "(Chaldean) or rather, May their table, the symbol of friendship, be a snare for them, that they may be destroyed, or betrayed by their dearest friends. (Calmet)
The overthrow of the Jews, when they were assembled to eat the paschal lamb, is here foretold. (Worthington)
