Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 35:8

"Let destruction come upon him unawares; And let his net that he hath hid catch himself: With destruction let him fall therein." — Psalms 35:8 (ASV)

Let destruction. —There is considerable difficulty here, and the ancient versions, by their variations, seem to point to some confusion in the text. The Septuagint, no doubt, are right in reading the pronouns as plurals, instead of singular. The word translated “destruction” means, primarily, a storm, or the crash that accompanies a storm (Proverbs 1:27), and if with the Syriac we might supply a clause, both parallelism and sense would be complete.

“Let men come upon him (them) unexpectedly.
Let the net which he had catch himself,
The pit which he (they) dug, let him (them) fall into it,
In ruin let him (them) fall into it.”

For “unawares,” see margin and Note, Song of Solomon 6:12.