The snare [is] laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.
Ver. 10. The snare is laid for him in the ground, &c.] This heap of words, net, snare, gin, trap, cords, showeth that God hath many ways to catch the wicked with, and that nusquam et nunquam non eis impendeat exitium, destruction is ready to meet them at every turning. God cannot lack a weapon to beat a rebel.
And a trap for him in the way] He walks as it were upon a mine of gunpowder. The Hebrew hath it, His trap; such as most of the Caesars, till Constantine the Great, met with; and among the rest Maximinus, that inastive tyrant, eight feet high, who daily devoured forty pounds of flesh, and drank thereto six gallons of wine. This foul beast, after he had raised the sixth persecution against the Christians, especially against the pastors of the Church, and exercised many other great cruelties, was told to his teeth (Mimus in Theatre),
Eleptias grandis est, et occiditur;
Leo fortis est, et occiditur:
Cave multos, si singulos non times.
And it befell him accordingly, for at the siege of Aquileia, in Italy, he was slain as he slept at noon in his tent by his own soldiers (Euseb.). Ezekiel foretelleth the degenerate sons of Josiah, that they shall be taken by the king of Babylon as beasts in a toil. So Pharaoh, that natural brute beast, was "made to be taken and destroyed," 2Pe 2:12 Exodus 9:16 . So Saul complaineth that God had forsaken him, and the Philistines, those savage creatures, were upon him, 1 Samuel 28:15 "Behold, I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them," &c., Jeremiah 16:16 .