Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 78:41

They limited the Holy One of Israel. Here, then, is an awful charge, and mysterious it seems to us as awful. How dreadful that man, the worm, should arrogate to himself that, to say to him that made him, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Amazing, I say, the charge! to contract the dimensions and operations of the Deity. Amazing insolence, to draw a boundary line, beyond which the Creator himself must not pass, to define and prescribe to the Lawgiver of nature himself the pathway of his providence! The turpitude is immense. But we know, my friends, that the crime is not uncommon; and one of the natural results of sin seem to be this, —that the sinful spirit, whether of man or of the lost archangel, unable to shake the firm foundations of the Eternal Throne, amuses its malignity, and seeks a temporary cessation from its withering cares, in putting up barriers on the outskirts and frontiers of the Almighty empire, vainly hoping to annoy the Possessor of the throne they cannot disturb. Affecting words! Do they affect you as they affect me? They turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. Somehow, it seems no combination of words could have been so affecting. They limited God. They limited the Almighty. They limited the Infinite. No! These words have an awful and affecting surge of meaning in them; for wile they describe Him, awful and self contained Being whose essence is eternity and power; whose self existence is declared by the amazing marvels of nature; whose life was essential being. They limited Him —The One in whose being all being was swallowed up and absorbed —The One before whose glance mountains and hills fled away and were not found —The One from everlasting, God; high over all, blessed for ever more. The One to whom all the nations were as the drop of a bucket, and who took up the isles as a very little thing, —Him, they limited. They had known his character as The Holy One; it was all they knew of his character; but it was surrounded with an awfulness more dread than even the solitary power and self repose of Deity. In awful words and meanings they had heard his character proclaimed —The Holy One. Him they limited. Him, whose throne was curtained with the dreadful wings of sinless archangels, crying through the darkness of that ineffable brightness, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! and whose holiness was asserted even by the disorders of the rolling world. They limited him. More personal, and therefore more wonderful, became the enormity. The generation of their race had testified for Him, the Holy One of Israel; they had beheld the marvels of his holiness and power in Egypt, in the Red Sea; they had heard of the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; they had heard of him who had spoken to their Captain in the bush burning with fire; they beheld his pillar of fire and cloud; they knew themselves divinely selected and chosen; and him who chose they limited! That which should have ensured their faith became only the fountain of their criminality. E. Paxton Hood.