properly · verb, piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
way
נָתִ֗יבna.Tiv
H5410
a (beaten) track · noun, common masculine singular absolute
anger
לְאַ֫פּ֥וֹle.'A.Po
H639
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
spared
חָשַׂ֣ךְcha.Sakh
H2820
to restrain or (reflex.) refrain · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
soul
נַפְשָׁ֑םnaf.Sham
H5315
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
death
מִמָּ֣וֶתmi.Ma.vet
H4194
death (natural or violent) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
gave
הִסְגִּֽירhis.Gir
H5462
to shut up · verb, hiphil perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
life
וְ֝חַיָּתָ֗םve.chai.ya.Tam
H2416
alive · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
over
סָגַרçâgar
H5462
to shut up
pestilence
לַדֶּ֥בֶרla.De.ver
H1698
a pestilence · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
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
Ezekiel 7:4 And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in th…
2 Peter 2:4-5 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto ju…
Exodus 9:3-6 Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and…
Ezekiel 8:18 Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice,…
Ezekiel 9:10 And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head.
Romans 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Job 27:22 For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand.
Ezekiel 5:11 Wherefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD; Surely, because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 78:40–end
The matter and scope of this paragraph are the same with the former, showing what great mercies God had bestowed upon Israel, how provoking they had been, what judgments he had brought upon them for their sins, and yet how, in judgment, he remembered mercy at last. Let not those that receive mercy from God be thereby emboldened to sin, for the mercies they receive will aggravate their sin and hasten the punishment of it; yet let not those that are under divine rebukes for sin be discouraged from repentance, for their punishments are means of repentance, and shall not prevent the mercy God has yet in store for them. Observe,
I. The sins of Israel in the wilderness again reflected on, because…
He made a way to his anger,.... Or, "for" it, so that nothing could obstruct it, or hinder the execution of it; or "he weighed a path for his anger" (m); he weighed it in the balance of justice, and proportioned his anger to their crimes, and punished them according to their just deserts:
he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; which some understand of their cattle, and of the murrain that came upon them, by which they were destroyed, and which was the fifth plague of Egypt, Exodus 9:3, so the Targum,
"their beasts he delivered unto death;''
but Aben Ezra interprets it of the slaughter of the firstborn, expressed in the following verse; and so othe…
Psalm 78:42-51
42. They remembered not his hand in the day that he delivered them from the oppressor: [343] 43. When he set his signs in Egypt, and his miracles in the field of Zoan. 44. When he turned their rivers into blood; and their streams, that they could not drink. 45. He sent among them a mixture [344] which devoured them; and the frog which destroyed them. 46. And he gave their fruit [or produce] to the caterpillar, [345] and their labor to the grasshopper. [346] 47. And he destroyed their vines with hail, and their wild fig-trees [347] with hail stones. [348] 48. And he gave up their cattle to the hail; and their flocks to thunderbolts. 49. He sent upon them the fierceness of his…
The Church Fathers
But as far as regards the present passage of this Psalm, if we dare not ascribe those things which were marvellously formed out of creatures, to evil angels; we have a thing which without doubt we can ascribe to them; the dyings of the beasts, the dyings of the first-born, and this especially whence all these things proceeded, namely, the hardening of heart, so that they would not let go the people of God. [Exodus 4:21] For when God is said to make this most iniquitous and malignant obstinacy, He makes it not by suggesting and inspiring, but by forsaking, so that they work in the sons of unbelief that which God does duly and justly permit. [Ephesians 2:2] ...Moreover, those evil manners which we said were signified by these corporal plagues, on account of that which was said before, "I will open in parables my mouth," are most appropriately believed by means of evil angels to have been wrought in those that are made subject to them by Divine justice. For neither when that comes to pass of which the apostle speaks, "God gave them over into the lusts of their heart, that they should do things which are not convenient," can it be but that those evil angels dwell and rejoice therein, as in the matter of their own work: unto whom most justly is human haughtiness made subject, in all save those whom grace does deliver. "And for these things who is sufficient?" [2 Corinthians 2:16] Whence when he had said, "He sent unto them the anger of His indignation, indignation and anger and tribulation, an infliction through evil angels;" for this which he has added, "a way He has made for the path of His anger" [Psalm 78:50], whose eye, I pray, is sufficient to penetrate, so that it may understand and take in the sense lying hidden in so great a profundity? For the path of the anger of God was that whereby He punished the ungodliness of the Egyptians with hidden justice: but for that same path He made a way, so that drawing them forth as it were from secret places by means of evil angels unto manifest offenses, He most evidently inflicted punishment upon those that were most evidently ungodly. From this power of evil angels nothing does deliver man but the grace of God, whereof the Apostle speaks, "Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love:" [Colossians 1:13] of which things that people did bear the…
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
Anger Of God, The · Manifested in judgments and afflictions — Manifested in judgments and afflictions
Egyptians · Visted by plaguesEx 7;8;9;10;11;12; — Visted by plaguesEx 7;8;9;10;11;12;
Life, Natural · Of the wicked, not specially protected by God — Of the wicked, not specially protected by God
Murrain (A Disease Of Livestock) · A plague of Egypt — A plague of Egypt
Plague Or Pestilence, The · Fatal to man and beast — Fatal to man and beast
Punishment Of The Wicked, The · In this life by: Sickness — In this life by: Sickness
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).
When these plagues rose to the highest pitch, Israel became free, and removed, being led by its God, into the Land of Promise; but it continued still to behave there just as it had done in the desert. The poet in Psa 78:49-51 brings the fifth Egyptian plague, the pestilence (Exo 9:1-7), and the tenth and last, the smiting of the first-born (מכּת בּכרות), Exo 11:1, together. Psa 78:49 sounds like Job 20:23 (cf. below Psa 78:64). מלאכי רעים are not wicked angels, against which view Hengstenberg refers to the scriptural thesis of Jacobus Ode in his work De Angelis, Deum ad puniendos malos homines mittere bonos angelos et ad castigandos pios usurpare malos, but angels that bring misfortune. The…
The Israelites rebelled even though the Lord had rescued them from powerful plagues.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 78:50
He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;
He made a way to his anger, coming to the point with them by slow degrees; assailing their outworks first by destroying their property, and then coming in upon their persons as through an open breach in the walls. He broke down all the comforts of their life, and then advanced against their life itself. Nothing could stand in his way; he cleared a space in which to do execution upon his adversaries. He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence. In their soul was the origin of the sin, and he followed it to its source and smote it there. A fierce dis…
