Psalm 78
BSB
I Will Open My Mouth in Parables
(Matthew 13:34–35)
A Maskil of Asaph.
1Give ear, O my people, to my instruction;
listen to the words of my mouth.
2I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter things hidden from the beginning,
3that we have heard and known
and our fathers have relayed to us.
4We 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.
5For He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which He commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6that the coming generation would know them—
even children yet to be born—
to arise and tell their own children
7that they should put their confidence in God,
not forgetting His works,
but keeping His commandments.
8Then they will not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose heart was not loyal,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
9The archers of Ephraim
turned back on the day of battle.
10They failed to keep God’s covenant
and refused to live by His law.
11They forgot what He had done,
the wonders He had shown them.
12He worked wonders before their fathers
in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
13He split the sea and brought them through;
He set the waters upright like a wall.
14He led them with a cloud by day
and with a light of fire all night.
15He split the rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.
16He brought streams from the stone
and made water flow down like rivers.
17But they continued to sin against Him,
rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
18They willfully tested God
by demanding the food they craved.
19They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?
20When He struck the rock, water gushed out
and torrents raged.
But can He also give bread
or supply His people with meat?”
21Therefore the LORD heard
and was filled with wrath;
so a fire was kindled against Jacob,
and His anger flared against Israel,
22because they did not believe God
or rely on His salvation.
23Yet He commanded the clouds above
and opened the doors of the heavens.
24He rained down manna for them to eat;
He gave them grain from heaven.
25Man ate the bread of angels;
He sent them food in abundance.
26He stirred the east wind from the heavens
and drove the south wind by His might.
27He rained meat on them like dust,
and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
28He felled them in the midst of their camp,
all around their dwellings.
29So they ate and were well filled,
for He gave them what they craved.
30Yet before they had filled their desire,
with the food still in their mouths,
31God’s anger flared against them,
and He put to death their strongest
and subdued the young men of Israel.
32In spite of all this, they kept on sinning;
despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.
33So He ended their days in futility,
and their years in sudden terror.
34When He slew them, they would seek Him;
they repented and searched for God.
35And they remembered that God was their Rock,
that God Most High was their Redeemer.
36But they deceived Him with their mouths,
and lied to Him with their tongues.
37Their hearts were disloyal to Him,
and they were unfaithful to His covenant.
38And 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.
39He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.
40How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness
and grieved Him in the desert!
41Again and again they tested God
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42They did not remember His power —
the day He redeemed them from the adversary,
43when He performed His signs in Egypt
and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.
44He turned their rivers to blood,
and from their streams they could not drink.
45He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
and frogs that devastated them.
46He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
the fruit of their labor to the locust.
47He killed their vines with hailstones
and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
48He abandoned their cattle to the hail
and their livestock to bolts of lightning.
49He unleashed His fury against them,
wrath, indignation, and calamity—
a band of destroying angels.
50He cleared a path for His anger;
He did not spare them from death
but delivered their lives to the plague.
51He struck all the firstborn of Egypt,
the virility in the tents of Ham.
52He led out His people like sheep
and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
53He led them safely, so they did not fear,
but the sea engulfed their enemies.
54He brought them to His holy land,
to the mountain His right hand had acquired.
55He drove out nations before them
and apportioned their inheritance;
He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
56But they tested and disobeyed God Most High,
for they did not keep His decrees.
57They turned back and were faithless like their fathers,
twisted like a faulty bow.
58They enraged Him with their high places
and provoked His jealousy with their idols.
59On hearing it, God was furious
and rejected Israel completely.
60He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,
the tent He had pitched among men.
61He delivered His strength to captivity,
and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.
62He surrendered His people to the sword
because He was enraged by His heritage.
63Fire consumed His young men,
and their maidens were left without wedding songs.
64His priests fell by the sword,
but their widows could not lament.
65Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.
66He beat back His foes;
He put them to everlasting shame.
67He rejected the tent of Joseph
and refused the tribe of Ephraim.
68But He chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which He loved.
69He built His sanctuary like the heights,
like the earth He has established forever.
70He chose David His servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
71from tending the ewes He brought him
to be shepherd of His people Jacob,
of Israel His inheritance.
72So David shepherded them with integrity of heart
and guided them with skillful hands.
Introduction
Psalms 78
This psalm is historical; it is a narrative of the great mercies God had bestowed upon Israel, the great sins wherewith they had provoked him, and the many tokens of his displeasure they had been under for their sins. The psalmist began, in the foregoing psalm, to relate God's wonders of old, for his own encouragement in a difficult time; there he broke off abruptly, but here resumes the subject, for the edification of the church, and enlarges much upon it, showing not only how good God had been to them, which was an earnest of further finishing mercy, but how basely they had conducted themselves towards God, which justified him in correcting them as he did at this time, and forbade all complaints. Here is, I. The preface to this church history, commanding the attention of the present age to it and recommending it to the study of the generations to come (Psa 78:1-8). II. The history itself from Moses to David; it is put into a psalm or song that it might be the better remembered and transmitted to posterity, and that the singing of it might affect them with the things here related, more than they would be with a bare narrative of them. The general scope of this psalm we have (Psa 78:9-11) where notice is taken of the present rebukes they were under (Psa 78:9), the sin which brought them under those rebukes (Psa 78:10), and the mercies of God to them formerly, which aggravated that sin (Psa 78:11). As to the particulars, we are here told, 1. What wonderful works God had wrought for them in bringing them out of Egypt (Psa 78:12-16), providing for them in the wilderness (Psa 78:23-29), plaguing and ruining their enemies (Psa 78:43-53), and at length putting them in possession of the land of promise (Psa 78:54, Psa 78:55). 2. How ungrateful they were to God for his favours to them and how many and great provocations they were guilty of. How they murmured against God and distrusted him (Psa 78:17-20), and did but counterfeit repentance and submission when he punished them (Psa 78:34-37), thus grieving and tempting him (Psa 78:40-42). How they affronted God with their idolatries after they came to Canaan (Psa 78:56-58). 3. How God had justly punished them for their sins (Psa 78:21, Psa 78:22) in the wilderness, making their sin their punishment (Psa 78:29-33), and now, of late, when the ark was taken by the Philistines (Psa 78:59-64). 4. How graciously God had spared them and returned in mercy to them, notwithstanding their provocations. He had forgiven them formerly (Psa 78:38, Psa 78:39), and now, of late, had removed the judgments they had brought upon themselves, and brought them under a happy establishment both in church and state (Psa 78:65-72). As the general scope of this psalm may be of use to us in the singing of it, to put us upon recollecting what God has done for us and for his church formerly, and what we have done against him, so the particulars also may be of use to us, for warning against those sins of unbelief and ingratitude which Israel of old was notoriously guilty of, and the record of which was preserved for our learning. "These things happened unto them for ensamples," Co1 10:11; Heb 4:11.
Maschil of Asaph.
Cross-references: Ps 78:1 · Ps 78:9 · Ps 78:10 · Ps 78:11 · Ps 78:12 · Ps 78:23 · Ps 78:43 · Ps 78:54 · Ps 78:55 · Ps 78:17 · Ps 78:34 · Ps 78:40 · Ps 78:56 · Ps 78:21 · Ps 78:22 · Ps 78:29 · Ps 78:59 · Ps 78:38 · Ps 78:39 · Ps 78:65 · 1Cor 10:11 · Heb 4:11