Psalms 73:18
Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.
BSB
ASV
Surely thou settest them in slippery places: Thou castest them down to destruction.
KJV
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
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.
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.
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
Deuteronomy 32:35Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is coming quickly.”
leads to
Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”
For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.”
The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and full of wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on His foes and reserves wrath for His enemies.
until I entered God’s sanctuary; then I discerned their end.
Through
2 Thessalonians 1:9They will suffer the penalty of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might,
leads to
Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
he too will drink the wine of God’s anger, poured undiluted into the cup of His wrath. And he will be tormented in fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and…
Through
Jeremiah 23:12“Therefore their path will become slick; they will be driven away into the darkness and fall into it. For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment,” declares the LORD.
leads to
Give glory to the LORD your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they do not know what makes them stumble.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.