Psalms 78:49 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger Anger in the highest degree, wrath and indignation, the cause, and trouble, (tribulation and anguish, Romans 2:8-9,) the effect. These he cast upon them from on high, and did not spare. By sending evil angels among them Hebrew, משׁלחת, mishlachath, the sending of evil angels, or, of the angels, or messengers, of evil things; namely, as most commentators understand it, the angels whom God employed in producing these plagues. The reader must observe, that “some of the Egyptian plagues having been specified in the foregoing verses, others of them are here thrown together, and the whole scene is affirmed to have been a full display of wrath and vengeance, executed upon the oppressors of the church by evil angels, agents, or messengers; whether, by this expression, we understand the material instruments of divine displeasure, or angels employed as ministers of vengeance, or the actual appearance and ministration of evil spirits, suffered to torment the wicked in this world, as they certainly will do in the next. Tradition seems to have favoured this last opinion, since the author of the book of Wisdom, above referred to, describes the Egyptian darkness as a kind of temporary hell, in which there appeared to the wicked, whose conscience suggested to them every thing that was horrible, ‘a fire kindled of itself, very dreadful; they were seared with beasts that passed by, and hissing of serpents; and they were vexed with monstrous apparitions, so that they fainted, and died for fear; while over them was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness which should afterward receive them,'” Wisdom 17.