Psalms 78:47

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].

Sycamore-trees - Under these and the vines, all other trees are comprehended. This hail and frost destroyed the fruit of the trees, and sometimes the trees themselves.

He destroyed their vines with hail,....

He destroyed their vines with hail. No more shall thy butler press the clusters into thy cup, O Pharaoh! The young fruit bearing shoots were broken off, the vintage failed. And their sycomore trees with frost. Frost was not usual, but Jehovah regards no laws of nature when men regard not his moral laws. The sycomore fig was perhaps more the fruit of the many than was the vine, therefore this judgment was meant to smite the poor, while the former fell most heavily upon the rich. Mark how the heavens obey their Lord and yield their stores of hail, and note how the fickle weather is equally subservient to the divine will.

He destroyed their vines with hail. No more shall thy butler press the clusters into thy cup, O Pharaoh! The young fruit bearing shoots were broken off, the vintage failed. And their sycomore trees with frost. Frost was not usual, but Jehovah regards no laws of nature when men regard not his moral laws. The sycomore fig was perhaps more the fruit of the many than was the vine, therefore this judgment was meant to smite the poor, while the former fell most heavily upon the rich.