Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
stones. 829 48. And he gave up their cattle to the hail; and their flocks to thunderbolts. 49. He sent upon them the fierceness of his wrath, fury, anger, and affliction, and sent evil angels among them. 50. He made a way to his anger: he kept not their soul from death, and shut up their cattle
830 to the pestilence. 51. And he smote all the first-born in Egypt: the first-fruits of their strength 831 in the tents of Ham.
42. They remembered not his hand. The sacred writer still continues to upbraid the Israelites; for the simple remembrance of God's benefits might have restrained them, had they not wilfully and perversely forgotten whatever they had experienced. From this impious forgetfulness proceed waywardness and all rebellion. The hand of God, as is well known, is by the figure metonomy taken for his power. In the deliverance of the chosen tribes from Egypt here celebrated, the hand of God was stretched forth in a new and an unusual manner. And their impiety, against which the prophet now inveighs, was rendered the more detestable, from the fact that they accounted as nothing, or soon forgat, that which no length of time ought to have effaced from their memory. Farther, he recounts certain examples of the power of God, which he calls first signs, and then miracles, (verse 43,) that, by the recital of these, he may again rebuke the shameful stupidity of the people. By both these words he expresses the same thing; but in
The original word,שקמותםshikmotham, does not properly signify the fig-tree, but the sycamore, a tree which grows in Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt. It is different from the English sycamore, which is a species of maple. It bears fruit resembling the fig, whilst its leaves are like those of the mulberry-tree; whence its name, συκος, (sycos,) a fig-tree, and, μωρος, (moros,) a mulberry-tree. The sycamore was highly valued by the ancient Egyptians. It furnished them with wood for various purposes; it afforded a grateful shade by its wide-spreading branches; and the figs which it produced, it is not improbable, formed a principal part of the food of the common people. "Norden tells us the people for the greater part live upon these figs; thinking themselves well regaled when they have a piece of bread, a couple of sycamore-figs, and a pitcher filled with water from the Nile." — Harmer's Observations, volume 4, pages 4, 5. From this it is easy to conceive how severe and distressing the loss must have been which the Egyptians sustained "when their vines were destroyed with hail, and their sycamore-trees with frost or hailstones."
in frost A noun of four letters prefixed withחנמל ;בis read here only in Scripture. And what it may be is unknown. Severe frost, according to some; a kind of hail, according to others." — Bythner
The original word,חיתםchayatham, here rendered their cattle, is translated in our English Bible their life But in all the ancient versions it is their cattle The reference is to the plague which destroyed all the first-born in the land of Egypt. The first-born both of cattle, and of the Egyptians themselves, were involved in one common destruction. Exodus 12:29
"Ar. reads,' ,בניהםthe first-fruits of their children.' See Exodus 12:29." — Dimock