Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; And let strangers make spoil of his labor.
An exactor layeth a snare for all that he hath, And strangers spoil his labour.
Let the usurer cast the net over all that he hath, and let strangers despoil his labour;
Psalms — The canon's longest book — 150 Psalms edited into five doxology-bookended books, composed across a millennium, attributed to David, Asaph, Korah's sons, Moses, Solomon, Heman, Ethan, and anonymous voices. A ''Torah of David''; the Bible's longest continuous liturgical-devotional corpus.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
Voices3
Let the moneylender search out all his substance. You gave him money, O Lord, you gave to him as also to the others. But what did he do? He did not bind it up in a napkin, nor bury it in the earth, nor was he negligent: but when he had the Lord's talent and money, he took a price from the enemies of the Lord, and sold his own Lord. Therefore I say to you, O Lord, exact from him the interest of your money. And let strangers plunder his labors.
Jerome· Homily 35, on Psalm 108, 420patristic
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath,.... Or, "lay a snare for all" (c); as the Romans did, by bringing in their army, invading the land of Judea, and besieging the city of Jerusalem; who are "the extortioner or exacter that demanded tribute of them"; which they refused to pay, and therefore they seized on all they had for it. The Syriac and Arabic versions render it, "the creditor"; who sometimes for a debt would take wife and children, and all that a man had; see 2Ki 4:
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)reformed
. Ver. 11. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath. A doom indeed. Those who have once fallen into the hands of the usurer can tell you what this means: it were better to be a fly in the web of a spider. In the most subtle, worrying, and sweeping manner the extortioner takes away, piece by piece, his victim's estate, till not a fraction remains to form a pittance for old age.
The verses this one reaches8
The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from the thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth.
A trap seizes his heel; a snare grips him.
A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.
and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.
a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young.
He must return the fruit of his labor without consuming it; he cannot enjoy the profits of his trading.
Whenever the Israelites would plant their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other people of the east would come up and invade them,
For when you eat the fruit of your labor, blessings and prosperity will be yours.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first — the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Job 5:5The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from the thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth.
leads to
All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see…
For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.
I will punish Bel in Babylon. I will make him spew out what he swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him; even the wall of Babylon will fall.
“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies…
Through
Deuteronomy 28:29and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to…
leads to
Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead.
They encounter darkness by day and grope at noon as in the night.
So the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his forces was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim.
So the anger of the LORD burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance.
The whole web at once: see the Arc.
