Here, by way of remembrance, the prophet carries back the subject to the period of the church's deliverance at the time of the Egyptian bondage, and gives some of the striking examples of the Lord's dealings with their oppressors, by way of showing his mercy to them. Reader, it is one of the most blessed offices of the Holy Ghost, when, as the Remembrancer of Christ Jesus, he turns back at anytime the leaves of our own experience in the deliverances that are past, and which the Lord hath brought us through, to bring our forgetful hearts to a proper recollection of his grace and our undeservings. The Lord recommends this to his people, and it is always profitable, Isaiah 51:1.
Psalms 78:40-51
40 How oft did they provokef him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert!
41 Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.
42 They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy.
43 How he had wroughtg his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan:
44 And had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink.
45 He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them.
46 He gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their labour unto the locust.
47 He destroyedh their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost.
48 He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.
49 He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.
50 He madei a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;
51 And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham: