What Does Psalm 7:15 Mean in the King James?
He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “ditch” also carries the sense of corruption and ruin, so the trap already holds its maker’s destruction within it.
THE MEANING
A harm designed for someone else becomes the ground of its maker’s own collapse. The person who imagines a trap can stay separate from its consequences finds the thing made closing around its maker.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that a person can set ruin in motion against someone else and remain untouched by it.
THE ROOT
שַׁחַת
shaḥat
GROWS FROM
שחת
shachath
To corrupt, ruin, or destroy; the related noun can mean a pit or destruction.
“ditch” in this verse is shaḥat. English gives the verse a hole in the ground, while the Hebrew root also carries the sense of ruin and corruption. The pit is already named with the destruction it brings, and the maker falls into what he has set in motion.
ALSO GROWS
shichet: To corrupt or ruin.
שִׁחֵת
The same root describes the earth as corrupt in Genesis 6:11, linking the image of a pit with a wider picture of ruin.
mashchit: One who destroys.
מַשְׁחִית
Exodus 12:23 uses this form for the destroyer, showing the root’s force as active destruction.
THE PATTERN
What a person sets in motion can return upon them as the consequence of their own making.
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.The word for “ditch” here is שַׁחַת (shaḥat; pit), from שחת (shachath; ruin, corruption, destruction), the same root behind “corruption” in this verse. That shared root lets the pit read as more than a hole: it is ruin taking shape.
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