Psalms 78

¹ Listen to this Law, my people, pay attention to what I say;

² I am going to speak to you in parable and expound the mysteries of our past.

³ What we have heard and known for ourselves, and what our ancestors have told us,

⁴ must not be withheld from their descendants, but be handed on by us to the next generation; that is: the titles of Yahweh, his power and the miracles he has done.

⁵ When he issued the decrees for Jacob and instituted a Law in Israel, he gave our ancestors strict orders to teach it to their children;

⁶ the next generation was to learn it, the children still to be born, and these in their turn were to tell their own children

⁷ so that they too would put their confidence in God, never forgetting God’s achievements, and always keeping his commandments,

⁸ and not becoming, like their ancestors, a stubborn and unruly generation, a generation with no sincerity of heart, in spirit unfaithful to God.

⁹ The sons of Ephraim, who were bowmen, turned tail when the time came to fight;

¹⁰ they had not kept God’s covenant, they refused to follow his Law;

¹¹ they had forgotten his achievements, the marvels he had shown them:

¹² he had worked wonders for their ancestors in the plains of Zoan, down in Egypt:

¹³ dividing the sea, bringing them through, making the waters stand up like dikes,

¹⁴ leading them with a cloud by day and with a fiery glow at night,

¹⁵ splitting rocks in the wilderness, quenching their thirst with unlimited water,

¹⁶ conjuring streams from the rock and bringing down water in torrents.

¹⁷ They only sinned against him more than ever, defying the Most High in the desert,

¹⁸ deliberately challenging God by demanding their favourite food.

¹⁹ They blasphemed against God, ‘Is it likely’ they said ‘that God could give a banquet in the wilderness?

²⁰ ‘Admittedly, when he struck the rock, waters gushed, torrents streamed out, but bread now, can he give us that, can he provide meat for his people?’

²¹ Yahweh was enraged when he heard them, a fire flared at Jacob, the wrath attacked Israel

²² for having no faith in God, no trust in his power to save.

²³ He gave orders to the skies above, he opened the doors of heaven,

²⁴ he rained down manna to feed them, he gave them the wheat of heaven;

²⁵ men ate the bread of Immortals, he sent them more food than they could eat.

²⁶ He stirred up an east wind in the heavens, he conjured up a south wind by his power,

²⁷ he rained down meat on them like dust; birds as thick as sand on the seashore

²⁸ he sent tumbling into their camp, in all directions round their tents.

²⁹ They all had enough and to spare, he having provided what they wanted;

³⁰ but they had hardly satisfied their craving, the food was still in their mouths,

³¹ when the wrath of God attacked them, slaughtering their strongest men and laying the flower of Israel low.

³² Despite all this they went on sinning, and put no faith in his marvels;

³³ for which he blasted their days and their years in a flash.

³⁴ Whenever he slaughtered them they sought him, they came to their senses and sought him earnestly

³⁵ remembering that God was their rock, God the Most High, their redeemer.

³⁶ But though they outwardly flattered him and used their tongues to lie to him,

³⁷ in their hearts they were not true to him, they were unfaithful to his covenant.

³⁸ Compassionately, however, he forgave their guilt instead of killing them, repeatedly repressing his anger instead of rousing his full wrath,

³⁹ remembering they were creatures of flesh, a puff of wind that passes and does not return.

⁴⁰ How often they defied him in the wilderness, how often they outraged him in the desert,

⁴¹ repeatedly challenging God, provoking the Holy One of Israel –

⁴² entirely oblivious of his hand and of the time he saved them from the oppressor:

⁴³ by imposing his signs on Egypt, by displaying his wonders in the plains of Zoan,

⁴⁴ by turning their rivers into blood to stop them drinking from their streams,

⁴⁵ by sending horseflies to eat them and frogs to devastate them,

⁴⁶ by consigning their crops to the caterpillar and their hard-won harvest to the locust,

⁴⁷ by killing their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost,

⁴⁸ by condemning their cattle to plague and their flocks to feverish pests,

⁴⁹ by unleashing his fierce anger, rage, indignation and hardship on them, a mission of angels of disaster,

⁵⁰ by giving his anger free rein, by not even exempting them from death, by condemning them to plague,

⁵¹ by striking down all the first-born in Egypt, the first-fruits of their virility in the tents of Ham,

⁵² by driving his people out like sheep, by leading them through the wilderness like a flock,

⁵³ by guiding them safe and unafraid while the sea engulfed their enemies,

⁵⁴ by bringing them to his sacred frontier, the highlands conquered by his own right hand,

⁵⁵ by expelling the pagans in front of them and by marking out a heritage for each, in which the tribes of Israel could pitch their tents.

⁵⁶ Even so, they went on challenging God the Most High, rebelliously disregarding his decrees;

⁵⁷ as perverse and disloyal as their ancestors, treacherous as a bow with a warp,

⁵⁸ provoking him with their high places and rousing his jealousy with their idols.

⁵⁹ God was enraged when he heard them, he rejected Israel out of hand,

⁶⁰ he left his home in Shiloh, that tent where he once lived with men.

⁶¹ He consigned his power to captivity, his splendour[*a] to the enemy’s clutches;

⁶² he condemned his own people to the sword, he raged at his heritage,

⁶³ whose young men were then burnt to death – no brides left to hear the wedding song;

⁶⁴ whose priests fell by the sword – no widows left to raise the dirge.

⁶⁵ Then, like a sleeper, like a hero fighting-mad with wine, the Lord woke up

⁶⁶ to strike his enemies on the rump and put them to everlasting shame.

⁶⁷ Rejecting the tent of Joseph, not choosing the tribe of Ephraim,

⁶⁸ instead he chose the tribe of Judah and his well-loved mountain of Zion,

⁶⁹ where he built his sanctuary, a copy of high heaven, founding it firm as the earth for ever.

⁷⁰ Choosing David as his servant, he took him from the sheepfolds,

⁷¹ called him from tending ewes in lamb to pasture his people Jacob and Israel his heritage:

⁷² who did this with unselfish care and led them with a sensitive hand.