Psalm 78: God’s Compassionate Faithfulness and Israel’s Forgetting

78:2I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old,

78:3which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

78:4We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, his strength, and his wondrous deeds that he has done.

78:5For he established a covenant in Jacob, and appointed a teaching in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;

78:6that the generation to come might know, even the children who should be born; who should arise and tell their children,

78:7that they might set their hope in God, and not forget God’s deeds, but keep his commandments,

78:8and might not be as their fathers— a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God.

78:9The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle.

78:10They didn’t keep God’s covenant, and refused to walk in his law.

78:11They forgot his doings, his wondrous deeds that he had shown them.

78:12He did marvelous things in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

78:13He split the sea, and caused them to pass through. He made the waters stand as a heap.

78:14In the daytime he also led them with a cloud, and all night with a light of fire.

78:15He split rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as out of the depths.

78:16He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.

78:17Yet they still went on to sin against him, to rebel against the Most High in the desert.

78:18They tempted God in their heart by asking food according to their desire.

78:19Yes, they spoke against God. They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?

78:20Behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Will he provide meat for his people?”

78:21Therefore the LORD heard, and was angry. A fire was kindled against Jacob, anger also went up against Israel,

78:22because they didn’t believe in God, and didn’t trust in his salvation.

78:23Yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven.

78:24He rained down manna on them to eat, and gave them food from the sky.

78:25Man ate the bread of angels. He sent them food to the full.

78:26He caused the east wind to blow in the sky. By his power he guided the south wind.

78:27He also rained meat on them as the dust, winged birds as the sand of the seas.

78:28He let them fall in the middle of their camp, around their habitations.

78:29So they ate, and were well filled. He gave them their own desire.

78:30They didn’t turn from their cravings. Their food was yet in their mouths,

78:31when the anger of God went up against them, killed some of their strongest, and struck down the young men of Israel.

78:32For all this they still sinned, and didn’t believe in his wondrous works.

78:33Therefore he consumed their days in vanity, and their years in terror.

78:34When he killed them, then they inquired after him. They returned and sought God earnestly.

78:35They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God, their redeemer.

78:36But they flattered him with their mouth, and lied to him with their tongue.

78:37For their heart was not right with him, neither were they faithful in his covenant.

78:38But he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn’t destroy them. Yes, many times he turned his anger away, and didn’t stir up all his wrath.

78:39He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes away, and doesn’t come again.

78:40How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness, and grieved him in the desert!

78:41They turned again and tempted God, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

78:42They didn’t remember his hand, nor the day when he redeemed them from the adversary;

78:43how he set his signs in Egypt, his wonders in the field of Zoan,

78:44he turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that they could not drink.

78:45He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them.

78:46He also gave their increase to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust.

78:47He destroyed their vines with hail, their sycamore fig trees with frost.

78:48He also gave over their livestock to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.

78:49He threw on them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, and a band of angels of evil.

78:50He made a path for his anger. He didn’t spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence,

78:51and struck all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tents of Ham.

78:52But he led out his own people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

78:53He led them safely, so that they weren’t afraid, but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

78:54He brought them to the border of his sanctuary, to this mountain, which his right hand had taken.

78:55He also drove out the nations before them, allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

78:56Yet they tempted and rebelled against the Most High God, and didn’t keep his testimonies,

78:57but turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers. They were twisted like a deceitful bow.

78:58For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their engraved images.

78:59When God heard this, he was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel,

78:60so that he abandoned the tent of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men,

78:61and delivered his strength into captivity, his glory into the adversary’s hand.

78:62He also gave his people over to the sword, and was angry with his inheritance.

78:63Fire devoured their young men. Their virgins had no wedding song.

78:64Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows couldn’t weep.

78:65Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep, like a mighty man who shouts by reason of wine.

78:66He struck his adversaries backward. He put them to a perpetual reproach.

78:67Moreover he rejected the tent of Joseph, and didn’t choose the tribe of Ephraim,

78:68But chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved.

78:69He built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth which he has established forever.

78:70He also chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds;

78:71from following the ewes that have their young, he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob, his people, and Israel, his inheritance.

78:72So he was their shepherd according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.