39. For he remembered that they were merely mortal,gone like a breath of wind that never returns.
40. Oh, how often they rebelled against him in the wildernessand grieved his heart in that dry wasteland.
41. Again and again they tested God’s patienceand provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42. They did not remember his powerand how he rescued them from their enemies.
43. They did not remember his miraculous signs in Egypt,his wonders on the plain of Zoan.
44. For he turned their rivers into blood,so no one could drink from the streams.
45. He sent vast swarms of flies to consume themand hordes of frogs to ruin them.
46. He gave their crops to caterpillars;their harvest was consumed by locusts.
47. He destroyed their grapevines with hailand shattered their sycamore-figs with sleet.
48. He abandoned their cattle to the hail,their livestock to bolts of lightning.
49. He loosed on them his fierce anger—all his fury, rage, and hostility.He dispatched against thema band of destroying angels.
50. He turned his anger against them;he did not spare the Egyptians’ livesbut ravaged them with the plague.
51. He killed the oldest son in each Egyptian family,the flower of youth throughout the land of Egypt.
52. But he led his own people like a flock of sheep,guiding them safely through the wilderness.