Psalms 77:49
And he sent upon them the wrath of his indignation: indignation and wrath and trouble, which he sent by evil angels.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- misit in eos iram indignationis suæ, indignationem, et iram, et tribulationem, immissiones per angelos malos.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐξαπέστειλεν εἰς αὐτοὺς ὀργὴν θυμοῦ αὐτοῦ, θυμὸν καὶ ὀργὴν καὶ θλίψιν, ἀποστολὴν δι᾽ ἀγγέλων πονηρῶν·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 78:49
- יְשַׁלַּח בָּ֨ם חֲר֬וֹן אַפּ֗וֹ עֶבְרָ֣ה וָזַ֣עַם וְצָרָ֑ה מִ֝שְׁלַ֗חַת מַלְאֲכֵ֥י רָעִֽים
Haydock's commentary
Angels. Hebrew, "messengers of evil," (Tirinus) as the Septuagint may also signify the good angels. (Amama)
He ordered Moses and Aaron to denounce his judgments, which he executed either by the devils, (Origen; Worthington) or by the blessed spirits. (St. Ambrose; Exodus xii. 29., and Wisdom xviii. 14.)
Hence from the effect, (Bellarmine) they may have the appellation of evil. (Theodoret) (Calmet)
The other plagues are thus briefly mentioned. (Menochius) (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Origen Origen Against Celsus, Chapter XXXII
The Psalmist bears witness that divine justice employs certain evil angels to inflict calamities upon men: “He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, sent by evil angels.” Whether demons ever go beyond this when they are suffered to do what they are ever ready, though through the restraint put upon them they are not always able to do, is a question to be solved by that man who can conceive, in so far as human nature will allow, how it accords with the divine justice, that such multitudes of human souls are separated from the body while walking in the paths which lead to certain death. “For the judgments of God are so great,” that a soul which is still clothed with a mortal body cannot comprehend them; “and they cannot be expressed: therefore by unnurtured souls” they are not in any measure to be understood. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXVIII
23. 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!” ( ver. 40 ). “And they turned themselves and tempted God, and exasperated the Holy One of Israel” ( ver. 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 followeth what? “They remembered not His hands, in the day when He redeemed them from the hand of the troubler” ( ver. 42 ). And he beginneth to speak of what things He did to the Egyptians: “He set in Egypt His signs, and His prodigies in the plain of Thanis” ( ver. …
St John Chrysostom Homilies on Second Corinthians, Homily II
[10.] “That He would bless their coming in and their going out, the whole course of their life.” Here they are directed to ask even for some bodily good, as being yet somewhat weak. “Their houses and their households,” that is, if they have servants or kinsfolk or any others belonging to them. For these were the rewards of the old Covenant; and nothing then was feared so much as widowhood, childlessness, untimely mournings, to be visited with famine, to have their affairs go on unprosperously. And hence it is, that he alloweth these also fondly to linger over petitions rather material, making them mount by little and little to higher things. …