Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 78:33

"Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, And their years in terror." — Psalms 78:33 (ASV)

Therefore their days did he consume in vanity — He allowed them to spend their days — the days of that entire generation — in vain and fruitless wanderings in the desert. Instead of leading them at once to the promised land, they were kept there to wear out their life in tedious monotony, accomplishing nothing — wandering from place to place — until all the generation that had come out of Egypt had died.

And their years in trouble — literally, “in terror.” Amidst the troubles, the alarms, the terrors of a vast and frightful desert. Sin — rebellion against God — leads to a course of life, and a death, of which these gloomy, sad, and cheerless wanderings in the desert were a striking emblem.