Psalm 78:50

He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(50) Made a way.—Literally, levelled a path. So Symmachus.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 78:50-51. He made a way to his anger — By removing every obstacle that mercy had thrown in the path of justice, he made a way for his indignation, which then rushed forth like a fiery stream. Hebrew, יפלס נתיב לאפו, He weighed a path to his anger, that is, he made a most smooth, even, and exact path, as if he had done it by weight and measure, that so his anger might pass swiftly and freely, without interruption. The phrase also may be intended to signify the wisdom and justice of God in weighing out their plagues proportionably to their sins; that is, he did not cast his anger upon them rashly, but by weight: it was weighed with the greatest exactness, in the balances of justice: and though he exercised great severity toward them, it was only such as was answerable to their great and barbarous cruelty toward his people. For in his greatest displeasure he never did, nor ever will do, any wrong to any of his creatures. The path of his anger is always weighed. He spared not their soul from death — But suffered death to ride in triumph among them; and gave their life over to the pestilence — Which cut off the thread of life immediately. And smote all the firstborn in Egypt — “An unlimited commission was given to the destroyer, who, at midnight, passed through the land, and gave the final stroke in every house.” “While all things,” says the author of the book of Wisdom, chap. Psalm 18:14, “were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction, and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and, standing up, filled all things with death: and it touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth.” Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt; “and universal consternation reigned, inferior only to that which is to extend its empire over the world, when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.” — Horne.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

78:40-55. Let not those that receive mercy from God, be thereby made bold to sin, for the mercies they receive will hasten its punishment; yet let not those who are under Divine rebukes for sin, be discouraged from repentance. The Holy One of Israel will do what is most for his own glory, and what is most for their good. Their forgetting former favours, led them to limit God for the future. God made his own people to go forth like sheep; and guided them in the wilderness, as a shepherd his flock, with all care and tenderness. Thus the true Joshua, even Jesus, brings his church out of the wilderness; but no earthly Canaan, no worldly advantages, should make us forget that the church is in the wilderness while in this world, and that there remaineth a far more glorious rest for the people of God.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

He made a way to his anger - Margin, he weighed a path. He leveled a path for it; he took away all hindrance to it; he allowed it to have free scope. The idea of weighing is not in the original. The allusion is to a preparation made by which one can march along freely, and without any obstruction. See the notes at Isaiah 40:3-4.

He spared not their soul from death - He spared not their lives. That is, he gave them over to death.

But gave their life over to the pestilence - Margin, their beasts to the murrain. The original will admit of either interpretation, but the connection seems rather to demand the interpretation which is in the text. Both these things, however, occurred.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

50, 51. made a way—removed obstacles, gave it full scope.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He made a way, Heb. He weighed a path or causeway, i.e. he made a most smooth, and even, and exact path, as if he had done it by weight and measure, that so his anger might pass swiftly and freely without interruption. The phrase also seems to note the wisdom and justice of God in weighing out their plagues proportionably to their sins, and exercising great severity towards them answerably to their great and barbarous cruelty towards his people.

He spared not their soul from death, i.e. he punished them with death or killing plagues, as the next words explain it.

Their life; or, their beasts. So he speaks of the murrain among their cattle. But our translation seems better to agree with the next foregoing and following passages, which plainly speak of the death of persons.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

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, Exodus 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.

Geneva Study Bible

He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

50. He made a way to his anger] Lit., he levelled a path for his anger, i.e. gave it free course.

but gave their life over to the pestilence] This is the natural rendering of the words in this context. The rendering of R.V. marg., gave their beasts over to the murrain, is that of the Ancient Versions. But a reference to the murrain is out of place here, where the Psalmist is clearly describing the culmination of the plagues in the destruction of the firstborn. He emphasises the fact that after minor plagues had failed to touch Pharaoh’s conscience, God finally attacked the very lives of the Egyptians.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 50. - He made a way to his anger; literally, he levelled a way for his anger; i.e. made a smooth path for it (Cheyne). He spared not their soul from death; rather, held not back their soul. But gave their life over to the pestilence. This is, undoubtedly, the true meaning, and not "he gave their beasts over to the murrain." Though no "pestilence" is expressly mentioned in Exodus 12. as having caused the death of the firstborn, yet pestilence may assuredly have been the means employed. Psalm 78:50

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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 Psalm 78:49-51 brings the fifth Egyptian plague, the pestilence (Exodus 9:1-7), and the tenth and last, the smiting of the first-born (מכּת בּכרות), Exodus 11:1, together. Psalm 78:49 sounds like Job 20:23 (cf. below Psalm 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, Proverbs 6:24, cf. 1 Samuel 28:7; Numbers 5:18, Numbers 5:24; 1 Kings 10:15; Jeremiah 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 equals wicked angels, which it might signify elsewhere, but) of the evil ones equals evil, misfortune-bringing angels (Ew. ֗287, a). The poet thus paraphrases the המּשׁחית that is collectively conceived in Exodus 12:13, Exodus 12:23; Hebrews 11:28. In Psalm 78:50 the anger is conceived of as a stream of fire, in Psalm 78:50 death as an executioner, and in 50c the pestilence as a foe. ראשׁית אונים (Genesis 49:3; Deuteronomy 21:17) is that which had sprung for the first time from manly vigour (plur. intensivus). Egypt is called חם as in Psalm 105 and Psalm 111:1-10 according to Genesis 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, Jeremiah 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 Exodus 15:16., in accordance with the parallelism (although this is not imperative) and the usage of the language, which according to Isaiah 11:9; Isaiah 57:13, is incontrovertible, the whole of the Holy Land with its mountains and valleys (cf. Deuteronomy 11:11). בּחבל נחלה is the poetical equivalent to בּנחלה, Numbers 34:2; Numbers 36:2, and frequently. The Beth is Beth essentiae (here in the same syntactical position as in Isaiah 48:10; Ezekiel 20:41, and also Job 22:24 surely): He made them (the heathen, viz., as in Joshua 23:4 their territories) fall to them (viz., as the expression implies, by lot, בגורל) as a line of inheritance, i.e., (as in Psalm 105:11) as a portion measured out as an inheritance. It is only in Psalm 78:56 (and not so early as Psalm 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, Psalm 78:57, is not: a bow of slackness, but: a bow of deceit; for the point of comparison, according to Hosea 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 (Jeremiah 2:21) like a vow that misses the mark and disappoints both aim and expectation. The expression in Psalm 78:58 is like Deuteronomy 32:16, Deuteronomy 32:21. שׁמע refers to their prayer to the Ba(a4lim (Judges 2:11). The word התעבּר, which occurs three times in this Psalm, is a word belonging to Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 3:26). Psalm 78:59 is purposely worded exactly like Psalm 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.