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Psalm 78

God’s Goodness and Israel’s Ingratitude

A Maskil of Asaph.

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old,

things that we have heard and known,

that our ancestors have told us.

We will not hide them from their children;

we will tell to the coming generation

the glorious deeds of the L ord, and his might,

and the wonders that he has done.

He established a decree in Jacob,

and appointed a law in Israel,

which he commanded our ancestors

to teach to their children;

that the next generation might know them,

the children yet unborn,

and rise up and tell them to their children,

so that they should set their hope in God,

and not forget the works of God,

but keep his commandments;

and that they should not be like their ancestors,

a stubborn and rebellious generation,

a generation whose heart was not steadfast,

whose spirit was not faithful to God.

The Ephraimites, armed with the bow,

turned back on the day of battle.

They did not keep God’s covenant,

but refused to walk according to his law.

They forgot what he had done,

and the miracles that he had shown them.

In the sight of their ancestors he worked marvels

in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.

He divided the sea and let them pass through it,

and made the waters stand like a heap.

In the daytime he led them with a cloud,

and all night long with a fiery light.

He split rocks open in the wilderness,

and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.

He made streams come out of the rock,

and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

Yet they sinned still more against him,

rebelling against the Most High in the desert.

They tested God in their heart

by demanding the food they craved.

They spoke against God, saying,

“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?

Even though he struck the rock so that water gushed out

and torrents overflowed,

can he also give bread,

or provide meat for his people?”

Therefore, when the L ord heard, he was full of rage;

a fire was kindled against Jacob,

his anger mounted against Israel,

because they had no faith in God,

and did not trust his saving power.

Yet he commanded the skies above,

and opened the doors of heaven;

he rained down on them manna to eat,

and gave them the grain of heaven.

Mortals ate of the bread of angels;

he sent them food in abundance.

He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens,

and by his power he led out the south wind;

he rained flesh upon them like dust,

winged birds like the sand of the seas;

he let them fall within their camp,

all around their dwellings.

And they ate and were well filled,

for he gave them what they craved.

But before they had satisfied their craving,

while the food was still in their mouths,

the anger of God rose against them

and he killed the strongest of them,

and laid low the flower of Israel.

In spite of all this they still sinned;

they did not believe in his wonders.

So he made their days vanish like a breath,

and their years in terror.

When he killed them, they sought for him;

they repented and sought God earnestly.

They remembered that God was their rock,

the Most High God their redeemer.

But they flattered him with their mouths;

they lied to him with their tongues.

Their heart was not steadfast toward him;

they were not true to his covenant.

Yet he, being compassionate,

forgave their iniquity,

and did not destroy them;

often he restrained his anger,

and did not stir up all his wrath.

He remembered that they were but flesh,

a wind that passes and does not come again.

How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness

and grieved him in the desert!

They tested God again and again,

and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

They did not keep in mind his power,

or the day when he redeemed them from the foe;

when he displayed his signs in Egypt,

and his miracles in the fields of Zoan.

He turned their rivers to blood,

so that they could not drink of their streams.

He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them,

and frogs, which destroyed them.

He gave their crops to the caterpillar,

and the fruit of their labor to the locust.

He destroyed their vines with hail,

and their sycamores with frost.

He gave over their cattle to the hail,

and their flocks to thunderbolts.

He let loose on them his fierce anger,

wrath, indignation, and distress,

a company of destroying angels.

He made a path for his anger;

he did not spare them from death,

but gave their lives over to the plague.

He struck all the firstborn in Egypt,

the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham.

Then he led out his people like sheep,

and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid;

but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

And he brought them to his holy hill,

to the mountain that his right hand had won.

He drove out nations before them;

he apportioned them for a possession

and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

Yet they tested the Most High God,

and rebelled against him.

They did not observe his decrees,

but turned away and were faithless like their ancestors;

they twisted like a treacherous bow.

For they provoked him to anger with their high places;

they moved him to jealousy with their idols.

When God heard, he was full of wrath,

and he utterly rejected Israel.

He abandoned his dwelling at Shiloh,

the tent where he dwelt among mortals,

and delivered his power to captivity,

his glory to the hand of the foe.

He gave his people to the sword,

and vented his wrath on his heritage.

Fire devoured their young men,

and their girls had no marriage song.

Their priests fell by the sword,

and their widows made no lamentation.

Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,

like a warrior shouting because of wine.

He put his adversaries to rout;

he put them to everlasting disgrace.

He rejected the tent of Joseph,

he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;

but he chose the tribe of Judah,

Mount Zion, which he loves.

He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,

like the earth, which he has founded forever.

He chose his servant David,

and took him from the sheepfolds;

from tending the nursing ewes he brought him

to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,

of Israel, his inheritance.

With upright heart he tended them,

and guided them with skillful hand.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

52. And he made his people to go forth like sheep. The Psalmist again celebrates God’s fatherly love towards the chosen people, whom, as we have elsewhere remarked, he compares to a flock of sheep. They had no wisdom or power of their own to preserve and defend themselves; but God graciously condescended to perform towards them the office of a shepherd. It is a singular token of the love which he bore towards them, that he did not disdain to humble himself so far as to feed them as his own sheep. What could a multitude who had never been trained up to the art of war do against powerful and warlike enemies? So far from having learned the art of war, the people, as is well known, had been employed, when in Egypt, in mean and servile occupations, as if they had been condemned to toil under the earth in mines or in quarries.

53. And he conducted them in safety, and they were not afraid. This does not imply that they relied on God confidently, and with tranquil minds, but that, having God for their guide and the guardian of their welfare, they had no just cause to be afraid. When at any time they were thrown into consternation, this was owing to their own unbelief. From this cause proceeded these murmuring questions to which they gave utterance, when Pharaoh pursued them, upon their leaving Egypt, and when they were “sore afraid:” “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness,” (Exodus 14:11.) This security, then, is not to be referred to the feeling of this in the minds of the people, but to the protection of God, by which it came to pass that, their enemies having been drowned in the Red Sea, they enjoyed quiet and repose in the wilderness. Other benefits which God had bestowed upon them are here recited, and at the same time other transgressions with which they had been chargeable. This shows the more clearly their deep ingratitude. After having obtained possession of the inheritance which was promised them, as if they had been under no obligations to God, their hearts were always rebellious and untractable. The accomplishment, and, as it were, the concluding act of their deliverance, was the putting them in possession of the land of Canaan, from entering which they had precluded themselves, had not God determined, notwithstanding their wickedness, to complete, in all respects, the work which he had commenced. The land itself is called the borders of God’s sanctuary, (verse 54,) because God, in assigning it to his people, had also consecrated it to himself. This, it is manifest, exhibits in a more heinous and aggravated light the iniquity of the people, who brought into that land the same pollutions with which it had been anciently defiled. What madness was it for the people of Israel, who knew that the old inhabitants of the country had been driven from it on account of their abominations, to strive to surpass them in all kinds of wickedness? as if they had been resolved to do all they could to bring down upon their own heads that divine vengeance which they had seen executed upon others. The words this mountain are improperly explained by some as applying to the whole country of Judea; for although it was a mountainous country, there were in it plain and level grounds of large extent, both as to breadth and length. I have, therefore, no doubt, that by way of amplification the Psalmist makes honorable mention of mount Zion, where God had chosen a habitation for himself, and his chief seat. I indeed allow, that under this expression, by the figure synecdoche, a part is put for the whole; only I would have my readers to understand, that this place is expressly named, because from it, as from a source or fountain, flowed the holiness of the whole land. It is asserted that God, by his right hand, possessed or acquired this mountain; for the Hebrew verb קנה, kanah, may be understood in either of these senses: and this assertion is made, that the Israelites might not be lifted up with pride, as if they had achieved the conquest of the land, or had obtained the peaceable possession of it by their own power. As is stated in Psalm 44:3,

“They got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them.” (Psalm 44:3)