Salmi 78:12 Commento

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 divided the sea,.... The Targum adds, "by the rod of Moses their master;'' which he was ordered to lift up, and to stretch out his hand over the sea; which he did, and at the same time a strong east wind was raised, which caused the sea to go back, and divided the waters of it; see Exo 14:16. and caused them to pass through; that is, he caused the Israelites to pass through the sea; this they did in faith, Heb 11:29, in the faith of the power and promise of God, and of future grace and blessings, which this was an emblem of; for it was a representation of baptism, and is so called, Co1 10:1 and of the sea of Christ's blood, or of his sufferings and death; whereby all enemies are overcome and destroyed, as sin and Satan, signified by the Egyptians, and salvation is wrought, and every blessing of grace procured; and of the passage of God's people through the sea of this world, and afflictions in it, safe to glory: and he made the waters to stand as an heap; and were as a wall on the right hand and on the left hand so they continued until the Israelites had passed through; and then they returned, and covered the Egyptians, and drowned them, Exo 14:22.

"And they forgat His benefits, and the wonderful works of Him which He showed to them; before their fathers the wonderful things which He did" [Psalm 78:11]. What this is, is not a question to be negligently passed over. Concerning those very fathers he was speaking a little before, that they had been a generation crooked and embittering....What fathers, inasmuch as these are the very fathers, whom he would not have posterity to be like? If we shall take them to be those out of whom the others had derived their being, for example, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, by this time they had long since fallen asleep, when God showed wonderful things in Egypt. For there follows, "in the land of Egypt, in the plain of Thanis" [Psalm 78:12]: where it is said that God showed to them wonderful things before their fathers. Were they perchance present in spirit? For of the same the Lord says in the Gospel, "for all do live to Him." [Luke 20:38] Or do we more suitably understand thereby the fathers Moses and Aaron, and the other elders who are related in the same Scripture also to have received the Spirit, of which also Moses received, in order that they might aid him in ruling and bearing the same people? [Numbers 11:17] For why should they not have been called fathers? It is not in the same manner as God is the One Father, who does regenerate with His Spirit those whom He does make sons for an everlasting inheritance; but it is for the sake of honour, because of their age and kindly carefulness: just as Paul the elder says, "Not to confound you I am writing these things, but as my dearly beloved sons I am admonishing you:" [1 Corinthians 4:14] though he knew of a truth that it had been said by the Lord, "Call ye no man your father on earth, for One is your Father, even God." [Matthew 23:9] And this was not said in order that this term of human honour should be erased from our usual way of speaking: but lest the grace of God whereby we are regenerated unto eternal life, should be ascribed either to the power or even sanctity of any man. Therefore when he said, "I have begotten you;" he first said, "in Christ," and "through the Gospel;" lest that might be thought to be of him, which is of God....Accordingly, the land of Egypt must be understood for a figure of this world. "The plain of Thanis" is the smooth surface of lowly commandment. For lowly commandment is the interpretation of Thanis. In this world therefore let us receive the commandment of humility, in order that in another world we may merit to receive the exaltation which He has promised, who for our sake here became lowly.

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).

A record of God's dealings and the sins of the people is now made. The writer gives the history from the exode to the retreat from Kadesh; then contrasts their sins with their reasons for confidence, shown by a detail of God's dealings in Egypt, and presents a summary of the subsequent history to David's time. Zoan--for Egypt, as its ancient capital (Num 13:22; Isa 19:11).

It is now related how wonderfully God led the fathers of these Ephraimites, who behaved themselves so badly as the leading tribe of Israel, in the desert; how they again and again ever indulged sinful murmuring, and still He continued to give proofs of His power and of His loving-kindness. The (according to Num 13:22) very ancient Zoan (Tanis), ancient Egyptian Zane, Coptic G'ane, on the east bank of the Tanitic arm of the Nile, so called therefrom - according to the researches to which the Turin Papyrus No. 112 has led, identical with Avaris (vid., on Isa 19:11) (Note: The identity of Avaris and Tanis is in the meanwhile again become doubtful. Tanis was the Hyksos city, but Pelusium = Avaris the Hyksos fortress; vid., Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1866, S. 296-298.) - was the seat of the Hyksos dynasties that ruled in the eastern Delta, where after their overthrow Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the bondage, in order to propitiate the enraged mass of the Semitic population of Lower Egypt, embraced the worship of Baal instituted by King Apophis. The colossal sitting figure of Rameses II in the pillared court of the Royal Museum in Berlin, says Brugsch (Aus dem Orient ii. 45), is the figure which Rameses himself dedicated to the temple of Baal in Tanis and set up before its entrance. This mighty colossus is a contemporary of Moses, who certainly once looked upon this monument, when, as Ps 78 says, he "wrought wonders in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan." The psalmist, moreover, keeps very close to the Tra in his reproduction of the history of the Exodus, and in fact so close that he must have had it before him in the entirety of its several parts, the Deuteronomic, Elohimistic, and Jehovistic. Concerning the rule by which it is appointed ‛ā'sa phéle, vid., on Psa 52:5. The primary passage to Psa 78:13 (cf. נוזלים Psa 78:16) is Exo 15:8. נד is a pile, i.e., a piled up heap or mass, as in Psa 33:7. And Psa 78:14 is the abbreviation of Exo 13:21. In Psa 78:15. the writer condenses into one the two instances of the giving of water from the rock, in the first year of the Exodus (Ex. 17) and in the fortieth year (Num. 20). The Piel יבקּע and the plural צרים correspond to this compression. רבּה is not an adjective (after the analogy of תּהום רבּה), but an adverb as in Psa 62:3; for the giving to drink needs a qualificative, but תהמות does not need any enhancement. ויּוצא has ı̂ instead of ē as in Psa 105:43. The fact that the subject is continued in Psa 78:17 with ויּוסיפוּ without mention having been made of any sinning on the part of the generation of the desert, is explicable from the consideration that the remembrance of that murmuring is closely connected with the giving of water from the rock to which the names Massah u-Merı̂bah and Merı̂bath-Kadesh (cf. Num 20:13 with Num 27:14; Deu 32:51) point back: they went on (עוד) winning against Him, in spite of the miracles they experienced. למרות is syncopated from להמרות as in Isa 3:8. The poet in Psa 78:18 condenses the account of the manifestations of discontent which preceded the giving of the quails and manna (Ex. 16), and the second giving of quails (Num. 11), as he has done the two cases of the giving of water from the rock in Psa 78:15. They tempted God by unbelievingly and defiantly demanding (לשׁאל, postulando, Ew. 280, d) instead of trustfully hoping and praying. בּלבבם points to the evil fountain of the heart, and לנפשׁם describes their longing as a sensual eagerness, a lusting after it. Instead of allowing the miracles hitherto wrought to work faith in them, they made the miracles themselves the starting-point of fresh doubts. The poet here clothes what we read in Exo 16:3; Num 11:4., Psa 21:5, in a poetic dress. In לעמּו the unbelief reaches it climax, it sounds like self-irony. On the co-ordinating construction "therefore Jahve heard it and was wroth," cf. Isa 5:4; Isa 12:1; Isa 50:2; Rom 6:17. The allusion is to the wrath-burning at Taberah (Tab'eera), Num 11:1-3, which preceded the giving of the quails in the second year of the Exodus. For it is obvious that Psa 78:21 and Num 11:1 coincide, ויתעבר ואשׁ here being suggested by the ותבער־בם אשׁ eht yb d of that passage, and אף עלה being the opposite of ותשׁקע האשׁ in Psa 78:2. A conflagration broke out at that time in the camp, at the same time, however, with the breaking out of God's anger. The nexus between the anger and the fire is here an outward one, whereas in Num 11:1 it is an internal one. The ground upon which the wrathful decree is based, which is only hinted at there, is here more minutely given in Psa 78:22 : they believed not in Elohim (vid., Num 14:11), i.e., did not rest with believing confidence in Him, and trusted not in His salvation, viz., that which they had experienced in the redemption out of Egypt (Exo 14:13; Exo 15:2), and which was thereby guaranteed for time to come. Now, however, when Taberah is here followed first by the giving of the manna, Psa 78:23-25, then by the giving of the quails, Psa 78:26-29, the course of the events is deranged, since the giving of the manna had preceded that burning, and it was only the giving of the quails that followed it. This putting together of the two givings out of order was rendered necessary by the preceding condensation (in Psa 78:18-20) of the clamorous desire for a more abundant supply of food before each of these events. Notwithstanding Israel's unbelief, He still remained faithful: He caused manna to rain down out of the opened gates of heaven (cf. "the windows of heaven," Gen 7:11; Kg2 7:2; Mal 3:10), that is to say, in richest abundance. The manna is called corn (as in Psa 105:40, after Exo 16:4, it is called bread) of heaven, because it descended in the form of grains of corn, and supplied the place of bread-corn during the forty years. לחם אבּירים the lxx correctly renders ἄρτον ἀγγέλων (אבּירים = גּבּרי כח, Psa 103:20). The manna is called "bread of angels" (Wisd. 16:20) as being bread from heaven (Psa 78:24, Psa 105:40), the dwelling-place of angels, as being mann es-semâ, heaven's gift, its Arabic name, - a name which also belongs to the vegetable manna which flows out of the Tamarix mannifera in consequence of the puncture of the Coccus manniparus, and is even at the present day invaluable to the inhabitants of the desert of Sinai. אישׁ is the antithesis to אבירים; for if it signified "every one," אכלוּ would have been said (Hitzig). צידהּ as in Exo 12:39; לשׂבע as in Exo 16:3, cf. Psa 78:8.