He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness - So counterworks them as to cause their feet to be taken in their own snares, and their evil dealings to fall on their own pate. Such frequent proofs has God given of his especial interference in behalf of the innocent, who have been the objects of the plots and evil designs of the wicked, by turning those evil devices against their framers, that he who digs a pit for his neighbor shall fall into it himself has become a universal adage, and has passed, either in so many words or in sense, into all the languages of all the people of the earth. Lucretius expresses it strongly:
Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque,
Atque, unde exorta est, ad eum plerumque revortit.
Lucret. lib. v., ver. 1151.
"For force and wrong entangle the man that uses them;
And, for the most part, recoil on the head of the contriver."