Psalms 78
I Will Open My Mouth in Parables
A Maskil of Asaph.
1I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the beginning,2that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.
3We will not hide them from their children but will declare to the next generation the praises of the LORD and His might and the wonders He has performed.
4For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,
5that the coming generation would know them— even children yet to be born— to arise and tell their own children
6that they should put their confidence in God, not forgetting His works, but keeping His commandments.
7Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.
8The archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.
9They failed to keep God’s covenant and refused to live by His law.
10They forgot what He had done, the wonders He had shown them.
11He worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
12He split the sea and brought them through; He set the waters upright like a wall.
13He led them with a cloud by day and with a light of fire all night.
14He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.
15He brought streams from the stone and made water flow down like rivers.
16But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
17They willfully tested God by demanding the food they craved.
18They spoke against God, saying, “Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?
19When He struck the rock, water gushed out and torrents raged. But can He also give bread or supply His people with meat?”
20Therefore the LORD heard and was filled with wrath; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and His anger flared against Israel,
21because they did not believe God or rely on His salvation.
22Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of the heavens.
23He rained down manna for them to eat; He gave them grain from heaven.
24Man ate the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.
25He stirred the east wind from the heavens and drove the south wind by His might.
26He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
27He felled them in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.
28So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them what they craved.
29Yet before they had filled their desire, with the food still in their mouths,
30God’s anger flared against them, and He put to death their strongest and subdued the young men of Israel.
31In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.
32So He ended their days in futility, and their years in sudden terror.
33When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God.
34And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.
35But they deceived Him with their mouths, and lied to Him with their tongues.
36Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.
37And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath.
38He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.
39How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!
40Again and again they tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
41They did not remember His power — the day He redeemed them from the adversary,
42when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.
43He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink.
44He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.
45He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.
46He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
47He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning.
48He unleashed His fury against them, wrath, indignation, and calamity— a band of destroying angels.
49He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but delivered their lives to the plague.
50He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham.
51He led out His people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
52He led them safely, so they did not fear, but the sea engulfed their enemies.
53He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had acquired.
54He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
55But they tested and disobeyed God Most High, for they did not keep His decrees.
56They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.
57They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols.
58On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely.
59He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.
60He delivered His strength to captivity, and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.
61He surrendered His people to the sword because He was enraged by His heritage.
62Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs.
63His priests fell by the sword, but their widows could not lament.
64Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.
65He beat back His foes; He put them to everlasting shame.
66He rejected the tent of Joseph and refused the tribe of Ephraim.
67But He chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which He loved.
68He built His sanctuary like the heights, like the earth He has established forever.
69He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;
70from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance.
71So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands.