Ecclesiastes 10:8

He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it,.... This and the three following clauses are proverbial expressions, teaching men to be wise and cautious, lest by their conduct they bring mischief upon

He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.

He that diggeth a pit with this design, that another may unawares fall into it, shall fall into it; shall through God’ s just judgment be destroyed by his own wicked devices. Breaketh an hedge; whereby another man’ s fields, or vineyards, or orchards are distinguished and fenced, that he may either enter upon them, and take away their fruits, or by that means enlarge his own adjoining fields. Possibly he may have a particular respect unto magistrates or rulers, whom God hath hedged or fenced in, both with his own institution of magistracy, and with his laws, strictly requiring obedience from their subjects; and so he notes the danger of rising and rebelling against them. A serpent, which oft lurks in hedges, and bites those who come within its reach.

Ecclesiastes 10:8 He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.Ver. 8. He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.] As heedless huntsmen do. He that being of base beginning, and unmeet for government, seeks to set up himself upon better men’ s ruins, and where he finds not a way to make it, shall fall from his high hopes into remediless misery; as he hath made a match with mischief, so he shall have his belly full of it. As he hath conceived with guile, so (though he grow never so big) he shall bring forth nothing but vanity, and worse. And whoso breaketh an hedge.] The hedge of God’ s commandments, as our first parents did, to come to the forbidden fruit. A serpent bites such, and the poison cannot be gotten out. Others sense it thus (and I rather incline): He that seeks to overthrow the fundamental laws and established government of a commonwealth, and to break down the fences and mounds of sovereignty and subjection, shall no less (but much more) imperil himself than he that pulls up an old hedge, wherein serpents, snakes, and adders do usually lurk and lie in wait to do mischief. Wat Tyler the rebel dared to say that all the laws of England should come out of his mouth. Stratford uttered somewhat to the like sense in Ireland. Our good laws are our hedges; so our oaths - ορκος quasi ερκος. Let us look to both, or we are lost people. Det Deus ut admonitio haec adeo sit nobis omnibus commoda quam sit accommoda. Speed.

(8) Commentators cannot be said to have been very successful in their attempts to trace a connection between the proverbs of this chapter. Perhaps nothing better can be said than that the common theme of these proverbs is the advantage of wisdom, and here in particular of caution in great enterprises. It is forcing the connection to imagine that the enterprise from which the writer seeks to dissuade, is that of rebellion against the ruler whose error is condemned (Ecclesiastes 10:5). Diggeth a pit.—See Proverbs 26:27; Sir 27:26. The word here used for “pit” is found in later Hebrew, and nowhere else in the Old Testament. An hedge.—Rather, a stone wall, in the crevices of which serpents often have their habitation. (Comp. Proverbs 24:31; Lamentations 3:9; Amos 5:19.) This verse admits of a curious verbal comparison with Isaiah 58:12, “builder of the breach,” in one, answering to “breacher of the building” in the other.

Verse 8. Whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.] While spoiling his neighbour's property, he himself may come to greater mischief: while pulling out the sticks, he may be bit by a serpent, who has his nest there. Some have supposed that נחש nachash here means a thorn; perhaps from the similarity of its prick to the serpent's sting. He who forces his way through a hedge will be pricked by the thorns.

8. He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it] It is scarcely a profitable task to endeavour to trace a very close connexion between this and the preceding verses. The writer has got into what we may call the gnomic, or proverb-making state of mind, and, as in the Book of Proverbs, his reflections come out with no very definite or logical sequence. All that we can say is that the context seems to indicate that the maxims which follow, like those which have gone before, indicate a wide experience in the life of courts, and that the experience of a courtier rather than of a king, and accordingly find their chief application in the region of man’s political life, and that their general drift is that all great enterprises, especially perhaps all enterprises that involve change, destruction, revolution, have each of them its special danger. The first of the proverbs is verbally from Proverbs 26:27, and finds parallels in Psalms 7:15-16; Psalms 9:15; Psalms 10:2; Psalms 57:6. The thought is that of the Nemesis which comes on the evil doer. He digs a pit that his enemy may fall into it, and he falls into it himself. Plots and conspiracies are as often fatal to the conspirators as to the intended victims. The literature of all nations is full of like sayings, among which that of the engineer “hoist with his own petard” is perhaps the most familia whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him] Better, whoso breaketh down a fence or a stone wall, as in Proverbs 24:31; Lamentations 3:9, and elsewhere. Hedges, in the English sense of the word, are rare in the landscapes of Syria or Egypt. The crannies of such structures were the natural haunts of serpents (Isaiah 34:15; Amos 5:19), and the man who chose to do the work of destruction instead of being “a repairer of the breach” (Isaiah 58:12), might find his retribution in being bitten by them. The proverb, like many like sayings, is double-edged, and may have, as we consider the breaking down of the wall to be a good or evil work, a twofold meaning: (1) If you injure your neighbour’s property, and act as an oppressor, there may come an instrument of retribution out of the circumstances of the act itself. (2) If you are too daring a reformer, removing the tottering wall of a decayed and corrupt institution, you may expect that the serpents in the crannies, those who have “vested interests” in the abuse, will bite the hand that disturbs them. You need beforehand to “count the cost” of the work of reformation.

The figures seem to be taken from the work of building up and pulling down houses. In their general application, they recommend the man who would act wisely to be cautious when taking any step in life which involves risk.

8. Diggeth a pit — This is counsel to the aggrieved subject, warning him of the need of great caution, even in reasonable and justifiable resistance to the oppressor.