Psalms 78:50,51 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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. Psalms 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.