Yet they tempted, and provoked the most high God: and they kept not his testimonies.

“For that generation crooked and embittering, inasmuch as for these corporal blessings they put not off the coat of oldness, "Did tempt" yet, "and provoked the high God, and His testimonies they kept not: and they turned them away, and they kept not the covenant, like their fathers." For under a sort of covenant and decree they said, "All things which our Lord God hath spoken we will do, and we will hear." It is a remarkable thing indeed which he saith, "like their fathers:" while throughout the whole text of the Psalm he was seeming to speak of the same men as it were, yet now it appeareth that the words did concern those who were already in the land of promise, and that the fathers spoken of were of those who did provoke in the desert. "They were turned," he saith, "into a crooked," or, as some copies have it, "into a perverse bow." But what this is doth better appear in that which followeth, where he saith, "And unto wrath they provoked Him with their hills." It doth signify that they leaped into idolatry. The bow then was perverted, not for the name of the Lord, but against the name of the Lord: who said to the same people, "Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me." But by the bow He doth signify the mind's intention. This same idea, lastly, more clearly working out, "And in their graven idols," he saith, "they provoked Him to indignation."”

“But turned back,.... From God and his worship, apostatized from the true religion, and turned to idols: and dealt unfaithfully, like their fathers; in the wilderness; see Psa 78:8, they were turned aside like a deceitful bow; that promises well to carry the arrow right, but drops it at the feet of the archer; or carries it another way, so that it misses the mark, The Targum is, "as a bow casting arrows;'' to the ground, and not to the mark; see Hos 7:16, or being too much stretched is suddenly broken, and kills the archer; or returns to its own nature; so Arama.”