John Calvin Commentary Psalms 78:40

"How oft did they rebel against him in the wilderness, And grieve him in the desert!" — Psalms 78:40 (ASV)

How often did they provoke him in the desert? Here the preceding sentence is confirmed, for it is declared that, as they had on so many occasions provoked God in the wilderness by the vast accumulation of their sins, they would necessarily have perished a thousand times if God had not as often shown himself favorable and merciful towards them.

The interrogative form of the sentence more significantly expresses that they continued sinning without stopping. The word wilderness includes the circumstances of both place and time. This is intended, first, to reprove their ingratitude, because the memory of God’s benefits, while still fresh in their minds, and even the sight of them daily before their eyes, were not, at least, able to check them in their wickedness; and, secondly, to condemn their impetuous and infatuated recklessness in heaping up such a multitude of sins within such a short period.

In the same sense, it is added immediately afterward (verse 41) that they returned to their former ways, and tempted God. The word return does not here signify change, but a continued course of sinning.

The heinous indignity done to God when people tempt him is expressed with a beautiful metaphor. The Hebrew word תוה, tavah, signifies to mark out or describe. This implies that when the people dared to limit the operations of God according to their own pleasure, he was, as it were, shut up within bars of wood or iron, and his infinite power circumscribed within the narrow boundaries to which unbelief would confine it.

And certainly, whenever people do not go beyond their own understandings, it is as if they would measure God by their own small capacity, which is nothing less than pulling him down from his throne; for his Majesty must be brought into subjection to us if we would have him regulated according to our own fancy.