A Review of Israel’s History as a Source of Consolation
How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness, with rebellion upon rebellion, and grieve Him in the desert,troubling His loving fatherly heart with their unruly behavior.
V. 41. Yea, they turned back and tempted God, testing out His kindness in a total of ten temptations, Num. 14, 22, and limited the Holy One of Israel, worrying, troubling, vexing Him with their rebellious conduct.
V. 42. They remembered not His hand, outstretched as it had been for their deliverance, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy, from the oppression of the Egyptians, v. 43. how He had wrought His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan, v. 12. the psalmist now turning to a recital of the plagues which God sent upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians in order to compel them to give Israel permission to leave, v. 44. and had turned their rivers into blood, in the first general plague, Ex. 7, 17, and their floods, that they could not drink.
V. 45. He sent divers sorts of flies among them, the insect pests of the fourth plague, Ex. 8, 21-29, which devoured them, and frogs, in the second plague, Ex. 8, 2, which destroyed them. V. 46. He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, literally, “the eater,” the cricket, and their labor unto the locust, in the eighth plague, Ex. 10, 13-15.
V. 47. He destroyed their vines, the growth of which was a very important industry in ancient Egypt, with hail, in the seventh plague, Ex. 9, 23-25, and their sycomore-trees, the sycomore fig-trees of the Orient, with frost, great hailstones.
V. 48. He gave up their cattle also to the hail, Ex. 9, 23, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts, for the play of lightning accompanying the hail was unparalled, Ex. 9, 22. 24.
V. 49. He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them, that is, angels bringing all these misfortunes, destroying messengers of Yahweh.
V. 50. He made a way to His anger, giving it free rein; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence, in the plague of murrain, Ex. 9, 6; v. 51. and smote all the first-born in Egypt, in the final plague, Ex. 12, 29; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham, in the habitations where the Egyptians, the descendants of Ham, dwelled;