Psalm 78:49 Komentář

This psalm is historical; it is a narrative of the great mercies God had bestowed upon Israel, the great sins wherewith they had provoked him, and the many tokens of his displeasure they had been under for their sins. The psalmist began, in the foregoing psalm, to relate God's wonders of old, for his own encouragement in a difficult time; there he broke off abruptly, but here resumes the subject, for the edification of the church, and enlarges much upon it, showing not only how good God had been to them, which was an earnest of further finishing mercy, but how basely they had conducted themselves towards God, which justified him in correcting them as he did at this time, and forbade all complaints. Here is, I. The preface to this church history, commanding the attention of the present age to it and recommending it to the study of the generations to come (Psa 78:1-8). II. The history itself from Moses to David; it is put into a psalm or song that it might be the better remembered and transmitted to posterity, and that the singing of it might affect them with the things here related, more than they would be with a bare narrative of them. The general scope of this psalm we have (Psa 78:9-11) where notice is taken of the present rebukes they were under (Psa 78:9), the sin which brought them under those rebukes (Psa 78:10), and the mercies of God to them formerly, which aggravated that sin (Psa 78:11). As to the particulars, we are here told, 1. What wonderful works God had wrought for them in bringing them out of Egypt (Psa 78:12-16), providing for them in the wilderness (Psa 78:23-29), plaguing and ruining their enemies (Psa 78:43-53), and at length putting them in possession of the land of promise (Psa 78:54, Psa 78:55). 2. How ungrateful they were to God for his favours to them and how many and great provocations they were guilty of. How they murmured against God and distrusted him (Psa 78:17-20), and did but counterfeit repentance and submission when he punished them (Psa 78:34-37), thus grieving and tempting him (Psa 78:40-42). How they affronted God with their idolatries after they came to Canaan (Psa 78:56-58). 3. How God had justly punished them for their sins (Psa 78:21, Psa 78:22) in the wilderness, making their sin their punishment (Psa 78:29-33), and now, of late, when the ark was taken by the Philistines (Psa 78:59-64). 4. How graciously God had spared them and returned in mercy to them, notwithstanding their provocations. He had forgiven them formerly (Psa 78:38, Psa 78:39), and now, of late, had removed the judgments they had brought upon themselves, and brought them under a happy establishment both in church and state (Psa 78:65-72). As the general scope of this psalm may be of use to us in the singing of it, to put us upon recollecting what God has done for us and for his church formerly, and what we have done against him, so the particulars also may be of use to us, for warning against those sins of unbelief and ingratitude which Israel of old was notoriously guilty of, and the record of which was preserved for our learning. "These things happened unto them for ensamples," Co1 10:11; Heb 4:11. Maschil of Asaph.

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 78 Maschil of Asaph. Or for "Asaph" (f); a doctrinal and "instructive" psalm, as the word "Maschil" signifies; see Psa 32:1, which was delivered to Asaph to be sung; the Targum is, "the understanding of the Holy Spirit by the hands of Asaph.'' Some think David was the penman of it; but from the latter part of it, in which mention is made of him, and of his government of the people of Israel, it looks as if it was wrote by another, and after his death, though not long after, since the account is carried on no further than his times; and therefore it is probable enough it was written by Asaph, the chief singer, that lived in that age: whoever was the penman of it, it is certain he was a prophet, and so was Asaph, who is called a seer, the same with a prophet, and who is said to prophesy, Ch2 29:30 and also that he represented Christ; for that the Messiah is the person that is introduced speaking in this psalm is clear from Mat 13:34 and the whole may be considered as a discourse of his to the Jews of his time; giving them an history of the Israelites from their first coming out of Egypt to the times of David, and in it an account of the various benefits bestowed upon them, of their great ingratitude, and of the divine resentment; the design of which is to admonish and caution them against committing the like sins, lest they should be rejected of God, as their fathers were, and perish: some Jewish writers, as Arama observes, interpret this psalm of the children of Ephraim going out of Egypt before the time appointed.

He made a way to his anger,.... Or, "for" it, so that nothing could obstruct it, or hinder the execution of it; or "he weighed a path for his anger" (m); he weighed it in the balance of justice, and proportioned his anger to their crimes, and punished them according to their just deserts: he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; which some understand of their cattle, and of the murrain that came upon them, by which they were destroyed, and which was the fifth plague of Egypt, Exo 9:3, so the Targum, "their beasts he delivered unto death;'' but Aben Ezra interprets it of the slaughter of the firstborn, expressed in the following verse; and so others. (m) "ponderavit semitam furori suo", Pagninus, Vatablus; "libravit semitam irae suae", Tigurine version; "iter ad iram suam", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

"He discharged upon them the wrath of His anger;-anger, and wrath, and tribulation, a visitation by evil angels." Under anger, wrath, and tribulation, he intended bitter punishments; for God is without passion. And by anger you will understand the lesser penalties, and by wrath the greater, and by tribulation the greatest. The angels also are called evil, not because they are so in their nature, or by their own will, but because they have this office, and are appointed to produce pains and sufferings,-being so called, therefore, with reference to the disposition of those who endure such things; just as the day of judgment is called the evil day, as being laden with miseries and pains for sinners. To the same effect is the word of Isaiah, "I, the Lord, make peace, and create evil; " meaning by that, I maintain peace, and permit war.

I say then of these crooked and embittering persons, "How often they exasperated Him in the desert, and provoked Him to wrath in the waterless place!" [Psalm 78:40]. "And they turned themselves and tempted God, and exasperated the Holy One of Israel" [Psalm 78:41]. He is repeating that same unbelief of theirs, of which He had made mention above. But the reason of the repetition is, in order that there may be mentioned also the plagues which He inflicted on the Egyptians for their sakes: all which things they certainly ought to have remembered, and not to be ungrateful. Lastly, there follows what? "They remembered not His hands, in the day when He redeemed them from the hand of the troubler" [Psalm 78:42]. And he begins to speak of what things He did to the Egyptians: "He set in Egypt His signs, and His prodigies in the plain of Thanis" [Psalm 78:43]: "and He turned their rivers into blood, and their showers lest they should drink" [Psalm 78:44], or rather, "the flowings of waters," as some do better understand by what is written in Greek, τὰ ὀμβρήματα, which in Latin we call scaturigines, waters bubbling from beneath. "He sent upon them the dog-fly, and it ate them up; and the frog, and it destroyed them" [Psalm 78:45]. "And He gave their fruit to the mildew, and their labours to the locust" [Psalm 78:46]. "And He slew with hail their vineyards, and their mulberry trees with frost" [Psalm 78:47]. "And He gave over to the hail their beasts of burden, and their possessions to the fire" [Psalm 78:48]. "He sent upon them the anger of His indignation, indignation and anger and tribulation, a visitation through evil angels" [Psalm 78:49]. He made a way to the course of His anger, and their beasts of burden He shut up in death [Psalm 78:50]. "And He smote every first-born thing in the land of Egypt, the first-fruits of their labours in the tabernacles of Cham" [Psalm 78:51].

This Psalm, like the seventy-fourth, probably depicts the desolations of the Chaldeans (Jer 52:12-24). It comprises the usual complaint, prayer, and promised thanks for relief. (Psa 79:1-13) (Compare Psa 74:2-7).

evil angels--or, "angels of evil"--many were perhaps employed, and other evils inflicted.

When these plagues rose to the highest pitch, Israel became free, and removed, being led by its God, into the Land of Promise; but it continued still to behave there just as it had done in the desert. The poet in Psa 78:49-51 brings the fifth Egyptian plague, the pestilence (Exo 9:1-7), and the tenth and last, the smiting of the first-born (מכּת בּכרות), Exo 11:1, together. Psa 78:49 sounds like Job 20:23 (cf. below Psa 78:64). מלאכי רעים are not wicked angels, against which view Hengstenberg refers to the scriptural thesis of Jacobus Ode in his work De Angelis, Deum ad puniendos malos homines mittere bonos angelos et ad castigandos pios usurpare malos, but angels that bring misfortune. The mode of construction belongs to the chapter of the genitival subordination of the adjective to the substantive, like אשׁת רע, Pro 6:24, cf. Sa1 28:7; Num 5:18, Num 5:24; Kg1 10:15; Jer 24:2, and the Arabic msjdu 'l-jâm‛, the mosque of the assembling one, i.e., the assembling (congregational) mosque, therefore: angels (not of the wicked ones = wicked angels, which it might signify elsewhere, but) of the evil ones = evil, misfortune-bringing angels (Ew. ֗287, a). The poet thus paraphrases the המּשׁחית that is collectively conceived in Exo 12:13, Exo 12:23; Heb 11:28. In Psa 78:50 the anger is conceived of as a stream of fire, in Psa 78:50 death as an executioner, and in 50c the pestilence as a foe. ראשׁית אונים (Gen 49:3; Deu 21:17) is that which had sprung for the first time from manly vigour (plur. intensivus). Egypt is called חם as in Ps 105 and Psa 111:1-10 according to Gen 10:6, and is also called by themselves in ancient Egyptian Kemi, Coptic Chmi, Kme (vid., Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, ch. 33). When now these plagues which softened their Pharaoh went forth upon the Egyptians, God procured for His people a free departure, He guided flock-like (כּעדר like בּעדר, Jer 31:24, with Dag. implicitum), i.e., as a shepherd, the flock of His people (the favourite figure of the Psalms of Asaph) through the desert, - He led them safely, removing all terrors out of the way and drowning their enemies in the Red Sea, to His holy territory, to the mountain which (זה) His right hand had acquired, or according to the accents (cf. supra, p. 104): to the mountain there (זה), which, etc. It is not Zion that is meant, but, as in the primary passage Exo 15:16., in accordance with the parallelism (although this is not imperative) and the usage of the language, which according to Isa 11:9; Isa 57:13, is incontrovertible, the whole of the Holy Land with its mountains and valleys (cf. Deu 11:11). בּחבל נחלה is the poetical equivalent to בּנחלה, Num 34:2; Num 36:2, and frequently. The Beth is Beth essentiae (here in the same syntactical position as in Isa 48:10; Eze 20:41, and also Job 22:24 surely): He made them (the heathen, viz., as in Jos 23:4 their territories) fall to them (viz., as the expression implies, by lot, בגורל) as a line of inheritance, i.e., (as in Psa 105:11) as a portion measured out as an inheritance. It is only in Psa 78:56 (and not so early as Psa 78:41) that the narration passes over to the apostate conduct of the children of the generation of the desert, that is to say, of the Israel of Canaan. Instead of עדוריו from עדוּת, the word here is עדוריו from עדה (a derivative of עוּד, not יעד). Since the apostasy did not gain ground until after the death of Joshua and Eleazar, it is the Israel of the period of the Judges that we are to think of here. קשׁת רמיּה, Psa 78:57, is not: a bow of slackness, but: a bow of deceit; for the point of comparison, according to Hos 7:16, is its missing the mark: a bow that discharges its arrow in a wrong direction, that makes no sure shot. The verb רמה signifies not only to allow to hang down slack (cogn. רפה), but also, according to a similar conception to spe dejicere, to disappoint, deny. In the very act of turning towards God, or at least being inclined towards Him by His tokens of power and loving-kindness, they turned (Jer 2:21) like a vow that misses the mark and disappoints both aim and expectation. The expression in Psa 78:58 is like Deu 32:16, Deu 32:21. שׁמע refers to their prayer to the Ba(a4lim (Jdg 2:11). The word התעבּר, which occurs three times in this Psalm, is a word belonging to Deuteronomy (Deu 3:26). Psa 78:59 is purposely worded exactly like Psa 78:21. The divine purpose of love spurned by the children just as by the fathers, was obliged in this case, as in the former, to pass over into angry provocation.