to fall · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
destruction
לְמַשּׁוּאֽוֹתle.ma.shu.'ot
H4876
ruin · preposition + noun, common feminine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 23:12 Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evil up…
Psalms 35:6 Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the LORD persecute them.
Deuteronomy 32:35 To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that…
Psalms 55:23 But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but I will…
Psalms 94:23 And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.
2 Thessalonians 1:9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
Psalms 37:20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume awa…
Psalms 37:35-38 I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 73:15-20
We have seen what a strong temptation the psalmist was in to envy prospering profaneness; now here we are told how he kept his footing and got the victory.
I. He kept up a respect for God's people, and with that he restrained himself from speaking what he had thought amiss, Psa 73:15. He got the victory by degrees, and this was the first point he gained; he was ready to say, Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and thought he had reason to say it, but he kept his mouth with this consideration, "If I say, I will speak thus, behold, I should myself revolt and apostatize from, and so give the greatest offence imaginable to, the generation of thy children." Observe here, 1. Though he though…
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places,.... In which a man cannot stand long, and without danger; and the higher they are the more dangerous, being slippery, and such are places of honour and riches. The phrase denotes the uncertainty and instability of these things, and the danger men are in who are possessed of them of falling into destruction and misery. The Targum is,
"thou didst set them in darkness;''
to be in slippery places, and in the dark, is very uncomfortable, unsafe, and dangerous indeed; See Psalm 35:6 and it may be observed, that all this honour, promotion, and riches, are of God; it is he that sets them in these places of honour and profit; and he that sets them up c…
Psalm 73:18-20
18. Surely thou hast set them in slippery places; thou shalt cast them down into destruction. 19. How have they been destroyed, as it were in a moment! they have perished, they have been consumed with terrors. 20. As it were a dream after a man is awakened: O Lord! in awaking, [193] thou wilt make their image to be despised, [or contemptible.]
18. Surely thou hast set them in slippery places. David, having now gone through his conflicts, begins, if we may use the expression, to be a new man; and he speaks with a quiet and composed mind, being, as it were, elevated on a watchtower, from which he obtained a clear and distinct view of things which before were hidden from him. I…
The Church Fathers
Such, then, is the first supposition of true knowledge, that things in the world happen by chance. The second is that "on account of the subterfuges you have placed before them" prodigious success, worldly profits and an abundance of riches. Otherwise, they might plead by way of excuse that they had been less devout by reason of want or of some bitter pain or grief and had been driven to the guilt of robbery and to the desire to plunder under compulsion of poverty. For they were enriched with wealth and exalted with honors, not for tranquility of life or the enjoyment of delight but that complaining might be foreclosed and distress piled up.
To wit, "because of deceitfulness You have set upon them" [Psalm 73:18]. Because deceitful they are, that is fraudulent; because deceitful they are, they suffer deceits. What is this, because fraudulent they are they suffer a fraud? They desire to play a fraud upon mankind in all their naughtinesses, they themselves also suffer a fraud, in choosing earthly good things, and in forsaking the eternal. Therefore, brethren, in their very playing off a fraud they suffer a fraud. In that which but now I said, brethren, "What manner of wit has he who to gain a garment does lose his fidelity?" has he whose garment he has taken suffered a fraud, or he that is smitten with so great a loss? If a garment is more precious than fidelity, the former does suffer the greater loss: but if incomparably good faith does surpass the whole world, the latter shall seem to have sustained the loss of a garment; but to the former is said, "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul?" [Matthew 16:26] Therefore what has befallen them? "Because of deceitfulness You have set for them: You threw them down while they were being exalted." He has not said, You threw them down because they were lifted up: not as it were after that they were lifted up You threw them down; but in their very lifting up they were thrown down. For thus to be lifted up is already to fall.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Psalms, Book Of — The present Hebrew name of the book is Tehill’im, “Praises;” but in the actual superscriptions of the psalms the word Tehillah is applied only to one, (Psalms 145:1) ... which is indeed emphatically…
Blindness · 21:14;22:13,14; — 21:14;22:13,14;
Envy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Happiness · .Often interrupted by — .Often interrupted by
Happiness Of The Wicked, The · Often interrupted by judgments — Often interrupted by judgments
Integrity · 16:19,20; — 16:19,20;
Meditation · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Murmuring · AGAINST GO — AGAINST GO
Punishment Of The Wicked, The · In this life by: Put in slippery places — In this life by: Put in slippery places
Rich, The · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Worldliness · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
To such, doubt is become the transition to apostasy. The poet has resolved the riddle of such an unequal distribution of the fortunes of men in a totally different way. Instead of כּמו in Psa 73:15, to read כּמוהם (Bצttcher), or better, by taking up the following הנה, which even Saadia allows himself to do, contrary to the accents (Arab. mṯl hḏâ), כּמו הנּה (Ewald), is unnecessary, since prepositions are sometimes used elliptically (כּעל, Isa 59:18), or even without anything further (Hos 7:16; Hos 11:7) as adverbs, which must therefore be regarded as possible also in the case of כּמו (Aramaic, Arabic כּמא, Aethiopic kem). The poet means to say, If I had made up my mind to the same course…
At this time, God’s sanctuary was the Temple in Jerusalem. There, in God’s presence, the psalmist receives special insight (cp. 18:6). • God deals with the wicked over the long term. He waits patiently and gives them time to repent (Ezek 33:11; 2 Pet 3:9); those who do not repent will get what they deserve.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 73:18
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
The Psalmist's sorrow had culminated, not in the fact that the ungodly prospered, but that God had arranged it so: had it happened by mere chance, he would have wondered, but could not have complained; but how the arranger of all things could so dispense his temporal favours, was the vexatious question. Here, to meet the case, he sees that the divine hand purposely placed these men in prosperous and eminent circumstances, not with the intent to bless them but the very reverse. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places. Their position was dangerous, and, therefore, God did not set his friends there b…
