Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.
Psalm 78 recounts the rich blessings God bestowed upon Israel and the poor return they made for those benefits, with this verse giving the consequence of that failure. Their days were consumed in vanity and their years in trouble, brought to a wasted, empty, useless end and to distress. That outcome came because for all His wondrous works they still sinned and did not believe. They constantly worked against a good God through disobedience, and by their own course of action brought wasted days and troubled years upon themselves as its sure result, so that sin took away their promised blessing.
The judgment specifically followed distrust that God would give food best fitted to preserve health. They despised angels' food that would have proved a blessing to them, and lusted for meat. God granted that lust by raining flesh upon them as dust, until His wrath came upon them while the meat was still in their mouths and slew the fattest of them and struck down the chosen men of Israel. On that account millions who had left Egypt with high hopes ended their lives wandering in the wilderness.
Their pattern was to repent under rebuke and chastisement but then to fall again under temptation, self-indulgence, and self-gratification. The verse shows the end of complaining under trial and forgetting God as the source of strength. Those in whom Christ abides and who fully receive heavenly truth stay connected to the source of wisdom and power, keep advancing in the divine life, and become sanctified through the truth, while Israel complained, forgot where strength came from, and so spent their lives in uselessness and distress.
Psalm 78 recounts the rich blessings God bestowed upon Israel and the poor return they made for those benefits, with this verse giving the consequence of that failure. Their days were consumed in vanity and their years in trouble, brought to a wasted, empty, useless end and to distress. That outcome came because for all His wondrous works they still sinned and did not believe. They constantly worked against a good God through disobedience, and by their own course of action brought wasted days and troubled years upon themselves as its sure result, so that sin took away their promised blessing.
The judgment specifically followed distrust that God would give food best fitted to preserve health. They despised angels' food that would have proved a blessing to them, and lusted for meat. God granted that lust by raining flesh upon them as dust, until His wrath came upon them while the meat was still in their mouths and slew the fattest of them and struck down the chosen men of Israel. On that account millions who had left Egypt with high hopes ended their lives wandering in the wilderness.
Their pattern was to repent under rebuke and chastisement but then to fall again under temptation, self-indulgence, and self-gratification. The verse shows the end of complaining under trial and forgetting God as the source of strength. Those in whom Christ abides and who fully receive heavenly truth stay connected to the source of wisdom and power, keep advancing in the divine life, and become sanctified through the truth, while Israel complained, forgot where strength came from, and so spent their lives in uselessness and distress.