Part of the quarrels run. The same shape 25:10 used.
Quick answer
The trap catches its maker. Two images, both of effort spent on someone else that returns to the person who spent it.
Read both lines
Both pictures involve labor. Digging a pit takes a day; rolling a stone uphill takes a shoulder, and the return is powered by the same gravity the roller was working against. That is the saying's precision: the energy that comes back at him is his own, redirected.
This is the book's ordinary account of how the world is governed, deed and consequence growing together, and it is not a claim that God arranges each individual outcome or a promise about timing. Read as a rule it would be false, since traps sometimes work. Read as the shape of things, it explains why this chapter has spent twelve verses on people who arrange harm quietly and why it does not bother threatening them.
Related: Proverbs 25:10 · Proverbs 28:10 · Proverbs 1:18–19 · Proverbs 11:8
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.