Псалтирь 104:34

Look closely at the shape of the sentence: "Сказал, и пришла саранча" — "He spoke, and locusts came." No staff waved, no incantation, no struggle. Just a word, and then devastation. This little verse is one link in a long chain running through Псалтирь 104 (which in most English Bibles is numbered Psalm 105) — a psalm that retells the whole story of how God rescued Israel: the call of Abraham, Joseph sold into Egypt, and then the ten plagues that broke Pharaoh's grip. Verse 34 is the eighth plague — locusts (Исход/Exodus 10:1-20) — described here almost like a repeated drumbeat throughout this section: "He spoke, and there came flies... he spoke, and there came locusts." That repeated formula is deliberate. It's the same grammar as Genesis 1 — "God said... and it was so" — except now the creative word is aimed at un-making Pharaoh's kingdom, stripping his land bare exactly the way God had once filled the earth with green things.

Easy to miss: this psalm isn't reciting history for the sake of nostalgia. Verse 45, at the very end, tells you why all this is remembered — "чтобы соблюдали уставы Его и хранили законы Его" — so that God's people would keep his commands. The plagues aren't trivia; they're evidence meant to produce obedience and trust today.

Where this sits in the bigger story: Psalm 105 is a "remembering" psalm, likely sung when Israel needed reassurance that the God who once humbled an empire with a word hasn't grown weaker or forgotten his promises [[cite:j