Psalms 78:38-48 - Frederick Brotherton Meyer's Commentary

Bible Comments

“Signs in Egypt”

Psalms 78:38-48

God takes into account the frailty and infirmity of our natures. The Spirit… helpeth our infirmities, Romans 8:26. In the words of Hosea, God teaches us “to go;” that is, He puts His hands under our armpits, that we may learn how to walk. In the process there are many failures, but He distinguishes between the willful breach of His commands, and the blunders that are due to the frailty of our natures. Being full of compassion, He forgives; He remembers that we are but flesh.

Let us not limit the Holy One, Psalms 78:41. He waits to do marvelous things for us and by us; but how often we confine His power within the narrow channel of our own little faith. We do not like to trouble Him too often. We say in effect that as He has done this, we can hardly expect Him to do the other. We bring a limited number of vessels to be filled with the sacred oil. We strike but three times on the ground, and not until the seventh time of perfection. He cannot do many mighty things for us because our unbelief. Let us quicken our souls to larger thoughts of God, by recounting, as in this paragraph, His wonders of old.

Psalms 78:38-48

38 But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath.

39 For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.

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.