The man who sets a trap for others will get caught in it himself. Roll a boulder down on someone, and it will roll back and crush you. [Proverbs 26:27 (TLB)]
Because the wicked are unfair, their violence boomerangs and destroys them. [Proverbs 21:7 (TLB)]
Even without knowing what a petard is, we probably know that when someone gets “hoisted by his own petard,” he’s been foiled by his own scheme. When Shakespeare’s audience heard this phrase spoken by Hamlet in 1600, they knew a petard was a bomb. In the bard’s day, hoisted had more than one meaning. Along with lifted, it meant removed or taken out. Taken literally, Hamlet’s phrase meant that his enemy would be blown up by his own bomb!
Proverbs has much to say about evil schemes backfiring and, when reading them, I often think of the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote. This hapless canine continually plotted ways to capture the noisy Roadrunner and he probably holds the record for having the most schemes backfire. For example, when he dropped an anvil on the bird from a hot air balloon, the balloon rapidly lost altitude and sunk to the ground just in time for the anvil to land on the coyote’s head. When he tried to capture the bird using a boomerang covered in glue, Coyote ended up stuck to the weapon when it returned to him. He literally was the one hoisted by his own petard when he mistakenly tossed a grenade’s pin at the bird rather than the grenade in his paw. While the bird safely whizzed down the road, the schemer was blown into the air when the grenade exploded.
It’s not just fiction’s villains and Looney Tune characters whose devious plans backfire—we see plenty of petard hoisting in Scripture. When Israel’s King Ahab and Judah’s King Jehoshaphat joined forces against the king of Aram, Ahab tried to defeat the prophecy that he’d die in battle by disguising himself so he wouldn’t be recognized. To ensure his ploy would succeed, he put a bull’s eye on Jehoshaphat by insisting he wear his royal robes. Told only the kill Ahab, Aram’s soldiers mistakenly chased after Jehoshaphat but stopped when they discovered their error. Although Jehoshaphat remained unharmed, Ahab’s ruse backfired when he was fatally wounded by a random arrow.
Jealous of Daniel’s government position, King Darius’ officials plotted to have the pious Jew arrested and put to death for praying to Jehovah. But, after Daniel emerged from the lions’ den unscathed, those schemers (and their families) met their fate in that same lions’ den! When Moab’s King Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel, his evil plan backfired when Israel was blessed and Moab cursed! When Haman’s wickedness was revealed in the book of Esther, the evil man really was hoisted up and impaled on the 75-foot sharpened pole he erected to kill Esther’s cousin Mordecai.
Many years ago, my son and his wife gave us a boomerang. In theory, when thrown correctly, a boomerang flies in a circular path before returning to its starting point, but the only way that boomerang returned was if the dog brought it back to us! Evil plans, harmful schemes, and spiteful behavior, however, have a way of boomeranging and we don’t have to be Wile E. Coyote to have our maliciousness backfire or explode. If we wrong others or scheme against them, gossip, betray friendships, sabotage other people’s plans, or start pointing fingers, our strategies may well return to us. Remember the old phrase, “What goes around, comes around”? While that may not have been true for our boomerang, it appears to be true for malice, animosity, and evil plans.
Devotions of the Heart 