Psalms 78:57-59 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And dealt unfaithfully like their fathers They imitated their forefathers, both in their frequent apostacies from God, and in their falseness to their promises, when they pretended to repent of them. They were turned aside like a deceitful bow Which seems likely to send the arrow to the mark, but, when it is drawn, breaks, and drops the arrow at the archer's foot, or shoots awry, and thereby frustrates his design and expectation: so their depraved hearts made them turn aside into crooked paths, which were not directed according to the will of God. For, when they pretended, and both God and men expected obedience and gratitude to their great benefactor, they behaved themselves undutifully and unfaithfully toward him. When God heard this That is, perceived and understood it, speaking after the manner of men, or heard the cry of their iniquity which came before him; he was wroth He took it very heinously, as well he might, and he greatly abhorred Israel, whom he had greatly loved and delighted in. They who had been the people of his choice, became the generation of his wrath. Presumptuous sins, idolatries especially, render even Israelites odious to God's holiness, and obnoxious to his justice.