Psalms 78:44

I say then of these crooked and embittering persons, "How often they exasperated Him in the desert, and provoked Him to wrath in the waterless place!" [Psalm 78:40]. "And they turned themselves and tempted God, and exasperated the Holy One of Israel" [Psalm 78:41]. He is repeating that same unbelief of theirs, of which He had made mention above. But the reason of the repetition is, in order that there may be mentioned also the plagues which He inflicted on the Egyptians for their sakes: all which things they certainly ought to have remembered, and not to be ungrateful. Lastly, there follows what? "They remembered not His hands, in the day when He redeemed them from the hand of the troubler" [Psalm 78:42]. And he begins to speak of what things He did to the Egyptians: "He set in Egypt His signs, and His prodigies in the plain of Thanis" [Psalm 78:43]: "and He turned their rivers into blood, and their showers lest they should drink" [Psalm 78:44], or rather, "the flowings of waters," as some do better understand by what is written in Greek, τὰ ὀμβρήματα, which in Latin we call scaturigines, waters bubbling from beneath. "He sent upon them the dog-fly, and it ate them up; and the frog, and it destroyed them" [Psalm 78:45]. "And He gave their fruit to the mildew, and their labours to the locust" [Psalm 78:46]. "And He slew with hail their vineyards, and their mulberry trees with frost" [Psalm 78:47]. "And He gave over to the hail their beasts of burden, and their possessions to the fire" [Psalm 78:48]. "He sent upon them the anger of His indignation, indignation and anger and tribulation, a visitation through evil angels" [Psalm 78:49]. He made a way to the course of His anger, and their beasts of burden He shut up in death [Psalm 78:50]. "And He smote every first-born thing in the land of Egypt, the first-fruits of their labours in the tabernacles of Cham" [Psalm 78:51].

And had turned their rivers into blood,....

And had turned their rivers into blood. The waters had been made the means of the destruction of Israel's newborn infants, and now they do as it were betray the crime—they blush for it, they avenge it on the murderers. The Nile was the vitality of Egypt, its true life blood, but at God's command it became a flowing curse; every drop of it was a horror, poison to drink, and terror to gaze on. How soon might the Almighty One do this with the Thames or the Seine. Sometimes he has allowed men, who were his rod, to make rivers crimson with gore, and this is a severe judgment; but the event now before us was more mysterious, more general, more complete, and must, therefore, have been a plague of the first magnitude. And their floods, that they could not drink. Lesser streams partook in the curse, reservoirs and canals felt the evil; God does nothing by halves. All Egypt boasted of the sweet waters of their river, but they were made to loathe it more than they had ever loved it. Our mercies may soon become our miseries if the Lord shall deal with us in wrath.

And had turned their rivers into blood. The waters had been made the means of the destruction of Israel's newborn infants, and now they do as it were betray the crime—they blush for it, they avenge it on the murderers. The Nile was the vitality of Egypt, its true life blood, but at God's command it became a flowing curse; every drop of it was a horror, poison to drink, and terror to gaze on. How soon might the Almighty One do this with the Thames or the Seine.

Turned their rivers into blood - See on Exo 7:20 (note).