John Calvin Commentary Psalms 78:17

"Yet went they on still to sin against him, To rebel against the Most High in the desert." — Psalms 78:17 (ASV)

Yet they continued still to sin against him. The prophet, having briefly declared how God, by a continual succession of benefits, had clearly manifested the greatness of His love toward the children of Abraham, now adds that after having been placed under such deep and solemn obligations to Him, they, as was natural to them and according to their customary way, wickedly rebelled against Him.

In the first place, he accuses them of having provoked Him grievously by stubbornly adding iniquity to iniquity; and then he points out the particular kind of provocation with which they were chargeable. By the word provoke, he intimates that it was no light offense which they had committed, but wickedness so heinous and aggravated as not to be endured.

From the place in which it was committed, he emphasizes the enormity of the sin. It was in the very wilderness, while the remembrance of their deliverance was still fresh in their memory, and where they had every day full in their view tokens of the presence of God, and where even necessity itself should have constrained them to offer true and holy obedience—it was in that place, and under these circumstances, that they did not restrain their insolence and unbridled appetite.

It was then, certainly, a proof of monstrous infatuation for them to act in such a wanton and disgraceful manner as they did, at the very time when their lack of all things should have proved the best remedy for keeping them under restraint, and to do this even in the presence of God, who presented before them such manifestations of His glory as filled them with terror, and who allured them so kindly and tenderly to Himself.