Psalm 34:8

Let the snare which he knoweth not come upon him: and let the net which he hath hidden catch him: and into that very snare let them fall. (Psalm 34:8 DR)

The story of Haman in the book of Esther is famous in that he provides evidence of the aphorism of being hoisted with his own petard, which has an amusing etymology. It comes from the Bard himself, in the mouth of Hamlet who discovers a plot involving letters he was to carry to the King containing his own death sentence. Upon this discovery he modifies the letters so that the conspirators who were to accompany him are instead the ones executed. Hamlet thus speaks:

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ‘tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ‘tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet. (Hamlet, act 3, scene 4.)

The petard in this scene refers to a primitive bomb, and the bomb either rolls back and blows up the bomb-thrower or perhaps goes off in his hand, the word hoist originally having the sense of blown or blown up. And being Shakespeare, there is of course a fart joke in there as well, as the origin comes from the French pétard, itself derived from the Latin pedere meaning to fart. The related French word petarade referred to gun shot of farting, and thus the Bard knew how to layer poetic justice in mirth.

Haman’s petard was that he had conspired to murder Esther’s relative Mordecai for the latter’s refusal to give him the honor he felt he was due. To this end Haman had a large set of gallows built for the occasion, and went even further in convincing the king to eradicate all the Jews. Once the king was made aware that Haman’s plots would involve murdering the king’s new bride Esther, he stormed out in rage from the dinner that Esther had prepared. Haman—realizing the game was up—entreated her to spare his life, upon which the king re-entered and interpretated Haman’s entreaties of Esther as untoward advances. Haman’s fate was sealed:

He will force the queen also in my presence, in my own house. The word was not yet gone out of the king's mouth, and immediately they covered his face. And Harbona, one of the eunuchs that stood waiting on the king, said: Behold the gibbet which he hath prepared for Mardochai, who spoke for the king, standeth in Aman's house, being fifty cubits high. And the king said to him: Hang him upon it. So Aman was hanged on the gibbet, which he had prepared for Mardochai: and the king’s wrath ceased. (Esther 7:8-10 DR)

The Psalmist looks to the wicked who have hidden their traps for him and speaks of how they are now hoist with their own petard, although without the fart jokes. The irony or poetic justice is the same, however, for the hiddenness of their plots and traps belies their own ignorance of the trap that is about to come upon them:

A magnificent retribution, nothing more just! They have hidden a trap that I might know not: let a trap come upon them which they know not of. For I know of their trap. But what trap is coming upon them? That which they know not of. Let us hear, lest haply he speak of that. Let a trap come upon them, which they know not of. Perhaps that is one which they hid for him, that another which shall come upon themselves. Not so: but what? The wicked shall be holden with the cords of his own sins. [Proverbs 5:22] Thereby are they deceived, whereby they would deceive. Thence shall come mischief to them, whence they endeavoured mischief. For it follows, And let the net which they have hidden catch themselves, and let them fall into their own trap. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 11)

St. Augustine is careful to note that this recompense in not unrelated or distinct from what they conspired or plotted, but is the very thing which they had hidden for him. Their ignorance is thus found in the ignorance they assumed of the Psalmist; that is, they hid a trap for him, but that very desire for evil becomes the trap for them. They cannot see it—even though it is out in the open—because their wickedness blinds them to the danger into which they are falling. It is in this manner that sin becomes, as it were, its own punishment, for it brings the wrath that it intends upon the one who commits it.

St. Augustine goes on to compare it to someone who poisons a drink and then ends up forgetting which cup is which and drinks the very poison he meant for others. In this manner wickedness may or may not harm the one for whom it is intended, but always harms the one who commits it:

Verily, Brethren, thus believe, thus be assured; thus, if there be in you any more excellent reason or prudence, thus observe and know; there is no wicked man who hurts not himself first. For so think of wickedness as of fire. Thou wouldest burn something: that which thou appliest is first burned; if it be not burned, it burneth not. Thou hast a torch; this torch thou appliest to something to burn it: is not the torch itself which thou appliest first burned, that it may be able to burn any thing? Wickedness then proceedeth from thee, and whom doth it first waste but thyself? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 11)

That is, the soul that desires to do wickedness is like a torch to set things on fire to destroy them. For a torch to be used in this manner, the torch itself first has to be set on fire, which will inevitably and eventually destroy it. In the same manner, the soul that desires to do evil must first do evil to itself, and in doing so will inevitably and eventually burn itself up. Thus the wickedness that is desired for others is first desired for oneself, and the ignorance presumed of the victim is more notably found in the perpetrator. Haman sought to murder Mordecai and conceived wickedness in his soul to do so, imagining that Mordecai would be caught unaware. Yet this destructive blaze set forth in his own soul turned back upon him without him realizing it until it was too late, at which point he was hoist with his own petard.

Such is the end of the wicked if left to their own devices, for eventually justice will find them out and meet out the just punishment they have laid up for themselves. St. Augustine concludes by seeing this passage as ultimately a prophecy of our Lord’s Passion and Death, and the spiritual death of those who conspired against Him:

In what then fall they? In the same iniquity which they have hidden for me. Was not this done to the Jews? The Lord conquered their iniquity, they by their own iniquity were conquered. He rose for us: they died in themselves. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 11)

The malice of Jesus’ enemies was ultimately prompted by the devil, who also falls into the very trap which he laid, for in seducing Jesus’ enemies into murdering Him, the salvation of man was wrought upon the cross:

I think this speaks about the cross on which the devil falls unknowingly. For if he had known never would he have affixed the Lord of glory to the cross. (Evagrius of Pontus, Notes on the Psalms, 34.8., ACCS.)

The trope of the cross as a trap for the devil was a common one in the Church Fathers, and St. Augustine also develops this:

For we fell into the hands of the prince of this world, who seduced Adam, and made him his servant, and began to possess us as his slaves. But the Redeemer came, and the seducer was overcome. And what did our Redeemer to him who held us captive? For our ransom he held out His Cross as a trap; he placed in It as a bait His Blood. He indeed had power to shed His Blood, he did not attain to drink it. And in that he shed the Blood of Him who was no debtor, he was commanded to render up the debtors; he shed the Blood of the Innocent, he was commanded to withdraw from the guilty. He verily shed His Blood to this end, that He might wipe out our sins. That then whereby he held us fast was effaced by the Redeemer’s Blood. For he only held us fast by the bonds of our own sins. They were the captive’s chains. He came, He bound the strong one with the bonds of His Passion; He entered into his house into the hearts, that is, of those where he did dwell, and took away his vessels. We are his vessels. He had filled then with his own bitterness. This bitterness too he pledged to our Redeemer in the gall. He had filled us then as his vessels; but our Lord spoiling his vessels, and making them His Own, poured out the bitterness, filled them with sweetness. (St. Augustine, Sermon 130, 2.)

One can easily see the various reverses he employs throughout which gives the cross its poetic and very real justice, in that Christ turns what was meant for His destruction into the destruction of sin and death itself. Some commenters note that the term used for trap here—muscipula (also used in the Old Latin he reads for this Psalm)—literally means mousetrap, although it’s not clear that St. Augustine has mousetrap specifically in mind, as he uses the same word for traps for birds and other animals. At any rate the trap which is set for Christ by the devil becomes the very trap into which the devil is ensnared, and thus by which sin is defeated.

It is this reversal which allows Cassiodorus to proceed with another optimistic take on this passage, in that falling into the net is an image of repentance:

Because they had laid the snare which they thought could not be detected, they fell into the noose of which the sinner’s consciousness was unaware; and thus held fast by the cord of truth they could be liberated instead. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 8, Ancient Christian Writers.)

Cassiodorus sees the wicked falling into their own snares as a way of them coming to their senses, the punishment they receive being an awakening of their conscience so as to be able to be brought to repentance. In a sense, if they did not hide these snares they would be bound in their ignorance, but when the truth is revealed they can now shake off the bonds of sin and ignorance and be set free:

Note that He uses snare in a good sense here, so that caught by the Lord’s commandments they may through heavenly grace continue to advance to the kingdom. This is the prayer of Him for whom the destructive snare was gratuitously hidden. He did not render evil for evil, but when He hung on the cross He prayed for His enemies. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 8, Ancient Christian Writers.)

The mercy of God is thus vast and evident even in the midst of the evils we commit; there is, it would seem, a sense in which God permits us to fall into evil so that we may awaken to our deceit and sin and thus come to a knowledge of the truth (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4). If we never suffered the reversals of our sins we might never come to repentance and would be lost forever, but God in His great kindness allows us to fall into the traps we lay, as it were, so that caught in them we might awaken to His mercy and come to penance.

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I found a photo of someone falling and isolated it in Photoshop, and then brought it into After Effects. I found a nice background texture and applied Stretch it and then used additional masks to create the falling streaks coming off the figure. I took a different background texture and applied Stretch to it for the background streaks, and then added in some Particles using Particular with a very fast reverse gravity. I used Deep Glow to get some of the glow and then added some color correction with Looks.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: