42 They did not remember his power and how he rescued them from their enemies. 43 They did not remember his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders on the plain of Zoan. 44 For he turned their rivers into blood, so no one could drink from the streams. 45 He sent vast swarms of flies to consume them and hordes of frogs to ruin them. 46 He gave their crops to caterpillars; their harvest was consumed by locusts. 47 He destroyed their grapevines with hail and shattered their sycamore-figs with sleet. 48 He abandoned their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning. 49 He loosed on them his fierce anger- all his fury, rage, and hostility. He dispatched against them a band of destroying angels. 50 He turned his anger against them; he did not spare the Egyptians' lives but ravaged them with the plague. 51 He killed the oldest son in each Egyptian family, the flower of youth throughout the land of Egypt. 52 But he led his own people like a flock of sheep, guiding them safely through the wilderness. 53 He kept them safe so they were not afraid; but the sea covered their enemies.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Psalm 78:42-53
Commentary on Psalm 78:40-55.
(Read Psalm 78:40-55.)
Let not those that receive mercy from God, be thereby made bold to sin, for the mercies they receive will hasten its punishment; yet let not those who are under Divine rebukes for sin, be discouraged from repentance. The Holy One of Israel will do what is most for his own glory, and what is most for their good. Their forgetting former favours, led them to limit God for the future. God made his own people to go forth like sheep; and guided them in the wilderness, as a shepherd his flock, with all care and tenderness. Thus the true Joshua, even Jesus, brings his church out of the wilderness; but no earthly Canaan, no worldly advantages, should make us forget that the church is in the wilderness while in this world, and that there remaineth a far more glorious rest for the people of God.