a miracle · noun, common masculine singular absolute
did
עָ֣שָׂה'A.sah
H6213
to do or make · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
sight
נֶ֣גֶדNe.ged
H5048
a front · cardinal number, masculine singular construct
fathers
אֲ֭בוֹתָם'A.vo.tom
H1
father · noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
land
בְּאֶ֖רֶץbe.'E.retz
H776
the earth (at large · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
Egypt
מִצְרַ֣יִםmitz.Ra.yim
H4714
Mitsrajim · proper noun, a place name
field
שְׂדֵהse.deh-
H7704
a field (as flat) · noun, common masculine singular construct
Zoan
צֹֽעַןTzo.'an
H6814
Tsoan · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 13:22 And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron was built s…
Isaiah 19:11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the so…
Ezekiel 30:14 And I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.
Exodus 7:1-12:51 And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.
Deuteronomy 6:22 And the LORD shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes:
Psalms 135:9 Who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants.
Isaiah 19:13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tri…
Genesis 32:3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 78:9-39
In these verses,
I. The psalmist observes the late rebukes of Providence that the people of Israel had been under, which they had brought upon themselves by their dealing treacherously with God, Psa 78:9-11. The children of Ephraim, in which tribe Shiloh was, though they were well armed and shot with bows, yet turned back in the day of battle. This seems to refer to that shameful defeat which the Philistines gave them in Eli's time, when they took the ark prisoner, Sa1 4:10, Sa1 4:11. Of this the psalmist here begins to speak, and, after a long digression, returns to it again, Psa 78:61. Well might that event be thus fresh in mind in David's time, above forty years after, for the ark, which…
Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers,.... The Targum is,
"before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes of their fathers, he did marvellous things;''
but these were dead before this time; the Jews have a fancy, that these were brought to the sea, and placed upon it; and the Lord showed them what he would do for their children, and how he would redeem them; but this is to be understood of the plagues which were brought upon the Egyptians, and which are called wonders, Exodus 11:10, and were so to the Egyptians themselves; and these were done by the hands of Moses and Aaron, and in their sight:
in the land of Egypt; where the Israelites were in bondage, and while they w…
Psalm 78:12-16
12. He wrought marvellously [or he did wondrous things] in the sight of their fathers; in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. [322] 13. He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through, and made the waters to stand as an heap. 14. And he led them by a cloud in the day; and all the night by the light of fire. 15. He clave the rocks in the wilderness: and made them to drink in great deeps. 16. And he brought forth streams from the rock, and made the waters to run down like rivers.
12. He wrought marvellously in the sight of their fathers. The Psalmist is still to be regarded as condemning the posterity of the Israelites for their guilt; but he very properly, at the sam…
The Church Fathers
"Before their fathers the wonders which he did." The heretics, then, having forgotten their father, the wonders which he did in the land of Egypt, in the darkness of this world, how he freed them — they were reborn in the church, and afterward, once they were born, the church displeases them. "In the land of Egypt, in the field of Tanis": where idolatry was, where the king of Egypt was, where the horsemen of Egypt were, where Jannes and Mambres the adversaries of Moses were, where idolatry was. We were all in Egypt, and we have been freed by the Lord.
"Before their fathers the wonders which he did in the land of Egypt, in the field of Tanis: he split the sea and led them through; he set the waters as if in a wineskin, and led them down in a cloud by day." Let someone say: You do violence to Scripture: for it is said simply of the people of Israel, when they were led out of the land of Egypt, and therefore it is said according to the history; and we read that the ten tribes forsook God, and became idolaters, and that they followed the golden calves. Let us look at the time in which Asaph the prophet lived. Certainly at that time when David lived. But under David the ten tribes had not yet been separated. David reigned forty years; again Solomon another forty years; after eighty years, later under Rehoboam, the ten tribes were torn away. You see, therefore, that what is said is not said of the ten tribes, but it is prophesied concerning the heretics.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Goshen — (1.) A district in Egypt where Jacob and his family settled, and in which they remained till the Exodus (Gen. 45:10; 46:28, 29, 31, etc.). It is called “the land of Goshen” (47:27), and also simply…
Zoan — (Old Egypt. Sant= “stronghold,” the modern San). A city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, called by the Greeks Tanis. It was built seven years after Hebron in Palestine (Num. 13:22). This great and…
Miracles · Described as: Marvellous things — Described as: Marvellous things
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
It is now related how wonderfully God led the fathers of these Ephraimites, who behaved themselves so badly as the leading tribe of Israel, in the desert; how they again and again ever indulged sinful murmuring, and still He continued to give proofs of His power and of His loving-kindness. The (according to Num 13:22) very ancient Zoan (Tanis), ancient Egyptian Zane, Coptic G'ane, on the east bank of the Tanitic arm of the Nile, so called therefrom - according to the researches to which the Turin Papyrus No. 112 has led, identical with Avaris (vid., on Isa 19:11)
(Note: The identity of Avaris and Tanis is in the meanwhile again become doubtful. Tanis was the Hyksos city, but Pelusium = Avari…
The focus shifts from Ephraim (78:9-11) to Israel as a whole as the psalmist reflects on God’s power in Egypt (see 81:4-7) and in the wilderness.
78:12 The miracles are the ten plagues against Egypt that God performed during Israel’s captivity (Exod 7–12).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 78:12
Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
Egypt, here called the field of Zoan, was the scene of marvellous things which were done in open day in the sight of Israel. These were extraordinary, upon a vast scale, astounding, indisputable, and such as ought to have rendered it impossible for an Israelite to be disloyal to Jehovah, Israel's God.
