Psalm 105:16

Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(16) Called for a famine.—Comp. 2Kings 8:1; and in Ezekiel 14 we see how famine, with war and pestilence and noisome beasts, were regarded as Divine emissaries to be summoned and sent on His missions.

Staff of bread.—Leviticus 26:26. (See, too, Note on Psalm 104:15.)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 105:16-18. He called for a famine — That is, he brought a famine upon the land. He brake the whole staff of bread — Bread, which is the staff or support of men’s lives. He sent a man before them — Who was to nourish them in the famine: sent him, by the direction of his secret providence, many years before the famine began. Such are the foresight and timely care of Divine Providence. Whose feet they hurt with fetters — Being unjustly charged with a most heinous crime. He was laid in iron — Hebrew, נפשׁו ברזל באה, the iron entered his soul, which seems to be added emphatically, to aggravate the misery of his imprisonment, and to show how grievous it was to his very soul. Undoubtedly the false accusation, which was the cause of his imprisonment, the injury which was done him, and the foul and public scandal which lay upon him, must have pained him extremely.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

105:8-23 Let us remember the Redeemer's marvellous works, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth. Though true Christians are few number, strangers and pilgrims upon earth, yet a far better inheritance than Canaan is made sure to them by the covenant of God; and if we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit, none can do us any harm. Afflictions are among our mercies. They prove our faith and love, they humble our pride, they wean us from the world, and quicken our prayers. Bread is the staff which supports life; when that staff is broken, the body fails and sinks to the earth. The word of God is the staff of spiritual life, the food and support of the soul: the sorest judgment is a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. Such a famine was sore in all lands when Christ appeared in the flesh; whose coming, and the blessed effect of it, are shadowed forth in the history of Joseph. At the appointed time Christ was exalted as Mediator; all the treasures of grace and salvation are at his disposal, perishing sinners come to him, and are relieved by him.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Moreover, he called for a famine upon the land - It was not by chance; not by the mere operation of physical laws, but it was because God "ordered" it. The famine here referred to, as the connection shows, was that which occurred in the time of Jacob, and which was the occasion of the migration into Egypt. There was also a famine in the time of Abraham Genesis 12:10; but the design of the psalmist here is to refer to that period of the Jewish history which pertained to their residence in Egypt, and to the dealings of God with the nation when there, as furnishing an occasion for gratitude. Genesis 41; 42.

He brake the whole staff of bread - That which supports life, as a staff does a feeble man. See the notes at Isaiah 3:1.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

16. God ordered the famine. God

called for a famine—as if it were a servant, ready to come at God's bidding. Compare the centurion's words, as to disease being God's servant (Mt 8:8, 9).

upon the land—namely, Canaan (Ge 41:54).

staff of bread—what supports life (Le 26:26; Ps 104:15; Isa 3:1).

The Treasury of David

16 Moreover he called for a famine upon the land; he brake the whole staff of bread.

17 He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant:

18 Whose feet they hurt with fetters; he was laid in iron:

19 Until the time that his word came; the word of the Lord tried him.

20 The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free.

21 He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance:

22 To bind his princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators wisdom. 23 Israel also came into Egypt; and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.

The presence of God having remained with his chosen ones while they sojourned in Canaan, it did not desert them when they were called to go down into Egypt. They did not go there of their own choice, but under divine direction, and hence the Lord prepared their way and prospered them until he saw fit to conduct them again to the land of promise.

Psalm 105:16

"Moreover he called for a famine upon the land." He had only to call for it as a man calls for his servant, and it came at once. How grateful ought we to be that he does not often call in that terrible servant of his, so meagre and gaunt, and grim, so pitiless to the women and the children, so bitter to the strong men, who utterly fail before it. "He brake the whole staff of bread." Man's feeble life cannot stand without its staff - if bread fail him he fails. As a cripple with a broken staff falls to the ground, so does man when bread no longer sustains him. To God it is as easy to make a famine as to break a staff. He could make that famine universal, too, so that all countries should be in like case; then would the race of man fall indeed, and its staff would be broken for ever. There is this sweet comfort in the matter, that the Lord has wise ends to serve even by famine: he meant his people to go down into Egypt, and the scarcity of food was his method of leading them there, for "they heard that there was corn in Egypt."

Psalm 105:17

"He sent a man before them, even Joseph." He was the advance guard and pioneer for the whole clan. His brethren sold him, but God sent him. Where the hand of the wicked is visible God's hand may be invisibly at work, overruling their malice. No one was more of a man, or more fit to lead the van than Joseph, an interpreter of dreams was wanted, and his brethren had said of him, "Behold, this dreamer cometh." "Who was sold for a servant," or rather for a slave. Joseph's journey into Egypt was not so costly as Jonah's voyage when he paid his own fare, his free passage was provided by the Midianites, who also secured his introduction to a great officer of state by handing him over as a slave. His way to a position in which he could feed his family lay through the pit, the slaver's caravan, the slave market and the prison, and who shall deny but what it was the right way, the surest way, the wisest way, and perhaps the shortest way. Yet assuredly it seemed not so. Were we to send a man on such an errand we should furnish him with money - Joseph goes as a pauper; we should clothe him with authority - Joseph goes as a slave; we should leave him at full liberty - Joseph is a bondman: yet money would have been of little use when corn was so dear, authority would have been irritating rather than influential with Pharaoh, and freedom might not have thrown Joseph into connection with Pharaoh's captain and his other servants, and so the knowledge of his skill in interpretation might not have reached the monarch's ear. God's way is the way. Our Lord's path to his mediatorial throne ran by the cross of. Calvary; our road to glory runs by the rivers of grief.

Psalm 105:18

"Whose feet they hurt with letters." From this we learn a little more of Joseph's sufferings than we find in the book of Genesis: inspiration had not ceased, and David was as accurate an historian as Moses, for the same Spirit guided his pen. "He was laid in iron;" or "into iron came his soul." The prayer book version, "the iron entered into his soul," is ungrammatical, but probably expresses much the same truth. His fetters hurt his mind as well as his body, and well did Jacob say, "The archers shot at him, and sorely grieved him." Under the cruelly false accusation, which he could not disprove, his mind was, as it were, belted and bolted around with iron, and had not the Lord been with him he might have sunk under his sufferings. In all this, and a thousand things besides, he was an admirable type of him who in the highest sense is "the Shepherd, the stone of Israel." The iron fetters were preparing him to wear chains of gold, and making his feet ready to stand on high places. It is even so with all the Lord's afflicted ones, they too shall one day step from their prisons to their thrones.

continued...

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He called for, i.e. he effectually procured, as this word is used, 2 Kings 8:1 Isaiah 47:1,5 56:7 Romans 4:17.

The whole staff of bread, i.e. bread, which is the staff or support of our animal lives. See Leviticus 26:26 Psalm 104:15 Ezekiel 4:16.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Moreover, he called for a famine upon the land,.... On the land of Egypt; or rather on the land of Canaan, where Jacob and his sons sojourned; and which reached to all lands, Genesis 41:56 and calling for it, it came, being a servant at the command of the Lord; see 2 Kings 8:1.

He brake the whole staff of bread; so called, because it is the support of man's life, the principal of his sustenance: as a staff is a support to a feeble person, and which, when broke, ceases to be so. The staff of bread is broken, when either the virtue and efficacy of it for nourishment is taken away or denied; or when there is a scarcity of bread corn; which latter seems to be intended here; see Isaiah 3:1.

Geneva Study Bible

Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole {k} staff of bread.

(k) Either by sending scarcity or the strength and nourishment of it.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

16. And he called] So 2 Kings 8:1; Amos 5:8; Amos 7:4; Amos 9:6; Haggai 1:11. Observe the emphasis upon direct Divine agency in Psalm 105:16,

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 16. - Moreover he called for a famine upon the land. To "call for a famine" is the same thing as to create a famine. What God "calls for" immediately exists (see Genesis 1:3). "The land" intended is the land of Canaan. He brake the whole staff of bread (comp. Leviticus 26:26; Isaiah lit. 1). Bread is called a "staff," as the great support of life. (For the severity of the famine in Canaan, see Genesis 41:1; Genesis 42:5; Genesis 43:1.) Psalm 105:16

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"To call up a famine" is also a prose expression in 2 Kings 8:1. To break the staff of bread (i.e., the staff which bread is to man) is a very old metaphor, Leviticus 26:26. That the selling of Joseph was, providentially regarded, a "sending before," he himself says in Genesis 45:5. Psalm 102:24 throws light upon the meaning of ענּה ב. The Kerמ רגלו is just as much without any occasion to justify it as עינו in Ecclesiastes 4:8 (for עיניו). The statement that iron came upon his soul is intended to say that he had to endure in iron fetters sufferings that threatened his life. Most expositors take בּרזל as equivalent to בּבּרזל, but Hitzig rightly takes נפשׁו as an object, following the Targum; for ברזל as a name of an iron fetter

(Note: Also in ancient Arabic firzil (after the Aramaic פרזלא) directly signifies an iron fetter (and the large smith's shears for cutting the iron), whence the verb. denom. Arab. farzala, c. acc. pers., to put any one into iron chains. Iron is called בּרזל from בּרז, to pierce, like the Arabic ḥdı̂d, as being the material of which pointed tools are made.)

can change its gender, as do, e.g., צפון as a name of the north wind, and כבוד as a name of the soul. The imprisonment (so harsh at the commencement) lasted over ten years, until at last Joseph's word cam to pass, viz., the word concerning this exaltation which had been revealed to him in dreams (Genesis 42:9). According to Psalm 107:20, דברו appears to be the word of Jahve, but then one would expect from Psalm 105:19 a more parallel turn of expression. What is meant is Joseph's open-hearted word concerning his visions, and אמרת ה is the revelation of God conveying His promises, which came to him in the same form, which had to try, to prove, and to purify him (צרף as in Psalm 17:3, and frequently), inasmuch as he was not to be raised to honour without having in a state of deep abasement proved a faithfulness that wavered not, and a confidence that knew no despair. The divine "word" is conceived of as a living effectual power, as in Psalm 119:50. The representation of the exaltation begins, according to Genesis 41:14, with שׁלח־מלך

(Note: Here שׁלח is united by Makkeph with the following word, to which it hurries on, whereas in Psalm 105:28 it has its own accent, a circumstance to which the Masora has directed attention in the apophthegm: שׁלוחי דמלכא זריזין שׁלוחי דחשׁוכא מתינין (the emissaries of the king are in haste, those of darkness are tardy); vid., Baer, Thorath Emeth, p. 22.)

and follows Genesis 41:39-41, Genesis 41:44, very closely as to the rest, according to which בּנפשׁו is a collateral definition to לאסּר (with an orthophonic Dag.) in the sense of בּרצונו: by his soul, i.e., by virtue of his will (vid., Psychology, S. 202; tr. p. 239). In consequence of this exaltation of Joseph, Jacob-Israel came then into Egypt, and sojourned there as in a protecting house of shelter (concerning גּוּר, vid., supra, p. 414). Egypt is called (Psalm 105:23, Psalm 105:27) the land of Chaam, as in Psalm 78:51; according to Plutarch, in the vernacular the black land, from the dark ashy grey colouring which the deposited mud of the Nile gives to the ground. There Israel became a powerful, numerous people (Exodus 1:7; Deuteronomy 26:5), greater than their oppressors.