Psalm 78:46

Psalm 78:46, in plain English

The locust plague destroyed every crop in the field—all the work and investment of the farmers became food for insects. What a nation labored for was consumed in moments.

Why it's here

Agriculture was survival in the ancient world. A failed harvest meant starvation. When locusts came, they could strip a field completely in hours, eating every green thing. For Egypt's farmers, it was catastrophic. Pharaoh had already refused multiple times to let Israel leave; now his people were starving because of his stubbornness.

Who's speaking

Asaph, highlighting how God used the elements of creation itself as weapons against Egyptian resistance.

Where it sits in the story

The grasshopper and locust plagues (the eighth plague) show that creation itself serves God's purposes. Nothing is outside His control—not animals, not weather, not pests. For Israel watching this unfold, it taught them that the God who controls the locusts also controls Pharaoh, slavery, and their future.

The scholarly reading

The eighth plague — locusts (אַרְבֶּה, arbeh) — and grasshoppers are presented as consumptive judgment that annihilates agricultural production, the material basis of Egyptian civilization. The phrase 'fruit of their labor' (יְגִיעָם, yegiam) emphasizes the devastation of human productive effort.

Language and setting

Agricultural plague held particular existential terror in antiquity; it threatened not merely luxury but subsistence. The irony is theologically sharp: Egypt's agricultural mastery, source of its pride and power, becomes the instrument of its humiliation.

Voice

Asaph, deepening the narrative of cascading divine judgment, articulates how God's sovereignty extends to the agricultural systems that humanity depends upon for survival.

Significance

Exodus 10:1-20 records the locust plague as the eighth judgment. Its focus on crops prefigures the later biblical concern with covenant obedience and agricultural blessing/curse (cf. Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28).

44He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink.

45He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.

46He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.

47He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet.

48He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning.

Read all of Psalm 78 — The longest historical psalm — a retelling of Israel's journey from Egypt to David. Remember, so the next generation won't forget.