Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 105:16

Moreover he called for a famine upon the land. He had only to call for it as a man calls for his servant, and it came at once. How grateful ought we to be that he does not often call in that terrible servant of his, so meagre and gaunt, and grim, so pitiless to the women and the children, so bitter to the strong men, who utterly fail before it. He brake the whole staff of bread. Man's feeble life cannot stand without its staff —if bread fail him he fails. As a cripple with a broken staff falls to the ground, so does man when broad no longer sustains him. To God it is as easy to make a famine as to break a stall He could make that famine universal, too, so that all countries should be in like case: then would the race of man fall indeed, and its staff would be broken for ever. There is this sweet comfort in the matter, that the Lord has wise ends to serve even by famine: he meant his people to go down into Egypt, and the scarcity of food was his method of leading them there, for "they heard that there was corn in Egypt."