Psalms 77:51
And he killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt: the firstfruits of all their labour in the tabernacles of Cham.
Open Psalms 77:51 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et percussit omne primogenitum in terra Ægypti ; primitias omnis laboris eorum in tabernaculis Cham :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐπάταξεν πᾶν πρωτότοκον ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, ἀπαρχὴν τῶν πόνων αὐτῶν ἐν τοῖς σκηνώμασι Χάμ.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 78:51
- וַיַּ֣ךְ כָּל בְּכ֣וֹר בְּמִצְרָ֑יִם רֵאשִׁ֥ית א֝וֹנִ֗ים בְּאָהֳלֵי חָֽם
Haydock's commentary
Labour. "The first-born," (St. Jerome; Genesis xlix. 3., and Proverbs v. 9.) and their best effects. (Calmet)
This was the tenth plague. Cham was the father of Misraim, who peopled Egypt. (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
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 Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXVIII
29. The Psalm proceedeth then after the commemoration of the plagues of the Egyptians ( ver. 51 ) and saith, “And He took away like sheep His people, and He led them through like a flock in the desert” ( ver. 52 ). “And He led them down in hope, and they feared not, and their enemies the sea covered” ( ver. 53 ). This cometh to pass to so much the greater good, as it is a more inward thing, wherein being delivered from the power of darkness, we are in mind translated into the Kingdom of God, and with respect to spiritual pastures we are made to become sheep of God, walking in this world as it were in a desert, inasmuch as to no one is our faith observable: whence saith the Apostle, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.” But we are being led home in hope, “For by hope we are saved.” Nor ought we to fear. …