Psalms 78:47

"He also gave their increase to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust."

Key Reflection

This verse symbolizes God's judgment on a people who have strayed from His ways, using natural disasters as a means of discipline. The caterpillars devouring their crops and locusts consuming their hard labor serve as vivid metaphors for the total destruction of their efforts and blessings.

From the Scholars: Barnes' Notes

He destroyed their vines with hail -Margin, killed. SeeExodus 9:22-26. In the account in Exodus the hail is said to have smitten man and beast, the herb, and the tree of the field. In the psalm only one thing is mentioned, perhaps denoting the ruin by what would be particularly felt in Palestine, where the culture of the grape was so common and so important. And their sycamore trees with frost -The sycamore is mentioned particularly as giving poetic beauty to the passage. Of the sycamore tree, Dr. Thomson remarks (“land and the Book,” vol. i. p. 25), “It is a tender tree, flourishes immensely in sandy plains and warm vales, but cannot bear the hard, cold mountain.

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