Psalms 78
Big idea: The longest history in the Psalter, and it is written for children. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come — so that they might set their hope in God, and not forget, and not be like their fathers. What follows is a cycle repeated until it becomes unmistakable: rescue, forgetting, complaint, judgment, mercy, and forgetting again. The most human moment is the question the wilderness generation actually asked: can God prepare a table in the wilderness? And the most surprising thing in seventy-two verses is verse 38: but he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn't destroy them. It ends not with a moral but with a shepherd taken from the sheepfolds.
Psalm 78 ends with David chosen and Zion built. Psalm 79 is written after both have been overrun.
78:1–8 — We will not hide them from their children
The longest history lesson in the Psalter opens by calling itself a parable and dark sayings — which is a strange label for a straightforward retelling, until you notice what the retelling is for. The purpose is stated as a chain: fathers tell children, who tell their children, so that the next generation will NOT be like the fathers. The history is being taught as a warning about the people teaching it.
1 A contemplation by Asaph. Hear my teaching, my people. Turn your ears to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, 3 which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of Yahweh, his strength, and his wondrous deeds that he has done. 5 For 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; 6 that the generation to come might know, even the children who should be born; who should arise and tell their children, 7 that they might set their hope in God, and not forget God’s deeds, but keep his commandments, 8 and 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.
78:9–20 — Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
The first cycle of the pattern the psalm will repeat five times: God acts, they forget, they demand. And the question at the centre is the one the whole psalm exists to answer — 'Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?' They ask it having just watched him split a rock, and verse 20 shows them reasoning from the miracle to the doubt: he did the water, but can he do bread?
9 The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. 10 They didn’t keep God’s covenant, and refused to walk in his law. 11 They forgot his doings, his wondrous deeds that he had shown them. 12 He did marvelous things in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. 13 He split the sea, and caused them to pass through. He made the waters stand as a heap. 14 In the daytime he also led them with a cloud, and all night with a light of fire. 15 He split rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as out of the depths. 16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers. 17 Yet they still went on to sin against him, to rebel against the Most High in the desert. 18 They tempted God in their heart by asking food according to their desire. 19 Yes, they spoke against God. They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? 20 Behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Will he provide meat for his people?”
78:21–31 — Man ate the bread of angels
God answers the question of verse 19 twice over — manna, called the bread of angels, and then meat carried in on a wind and dropped in the camp. The answer is extravagant. And the movement's horror is in its timing: the anger arrives while the food is still in their mouths, so the judgment and the gift are simultaneous rather than sequential.
21 Therefore Yahweh heard, and was angry. A fire was kindled against Jacob, anger also went up against Israel, 22 because they didn’t believe in God, and didn’t trust in his salvation. 23 Yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven. 24 He rained down manna on them to eat, and gave them food from the sky. 25 Man ate the bread of angels. He sent them food to the full. 26 He caused the east wind to blow in the sky. By his power he guided the south wind. 27 He also rained meat on them as the dust, winged birds as the sand of the seas. 28 He let them fall in the middle of their camp, around their habitations. 29 So they ate, and were well filled. He gave them their own desire. 30 They didn’t turn from their cravings. Their food was yet in their mouths, 31 when the anger of God went up against them, killed some of their strongest, and struck down the young men of Israel.
78:32–41 — He remembered that they were but flesh
The cycle turns again, and this time the psalm examines the repentance and finds it hollow — they sought him when he killed them, and 'flattered him with their mouth'. What keeps the movement from being merely bleak is verse 39, which is the most sympathetic line in the psalm: he remembered that they were BUT FLESH. The mercy is grounded in an accurate assessment of what they are.
32 For all this they still sinned, and didn’t believe in his wondrous works. 33 Therefore he consumed their days in vanity, and their years in terror. 34 When he killed them, then they inquired after him. They returned and sought God earnestly. 35 They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God, their redeemer. 36 But they flattered him with their mouth, and lied to him with their tongue. 37 For their heart was not right with him, neither were they faithful in his covenant. 38 But 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. 39 He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes away, and doesn’t come again. 40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness, and grieved him in the desert! 41 They turned again and tempted God, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
78:42–55 — They didn't remember his hand
The psalm goes back to Egypt and retells the plagues, and the framing is the point: it opens with 'they didn't REMEMBER his hand'. What follows is a catalogue of exactly what was forgotten — rivers turned to blood, hail on the vines, the firstborn struck. Then the hinge at verse 52: after all that force, the verb changes to shepherding, and the same hand leads them out like sheep.
42 They didn’t remember his hand, nor the day when he redeemed them from the adversary; 43 how he set his signs in Egypt, his wonders in the field of Zoan, 44 he turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that they could not drink. 45 He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. 46 He also gave their increase to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust. 47 He destroyed their vines with hail, their sycamore fig trees with frost. 48 He also gave over their livestock to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. 49 He threw on them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, and a band of angels of evil. 50 He made a path for his anger. He didn’t spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence, 51 and struck all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tents of Ham. 52 But he led out his own people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. 53 He led them safely, so that they weren’t afraid, but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. 54 He brought them to the border of his sanctuary, to this mountain, which his right hand had taken. 55 He 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.
78:56–72 — He took him from the sheepfolds
The last cycle, and it ends somewhere the psalm has been heading all along. Shiloh is abandoned, the ark taken, priests killed and their widows unable even to hold a funeral. Then God wakes 'like a mighty man who shouts by reason of wine' — a startling, undignified image — and the resolution is a rejection: not Ephraim, who turned back in verse 9, but Judah, and a shepherd taken from behind the ewes.
56 Yet they tempted and rebelled against the Most High God, and didn’t keep his testimonies, 57 but turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers. They were twisted like a deceitful bow. 58 For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their engraved images. 59 When God heard this, he was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel, 60 so that he abandoned the tent of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men, 61 and delivered his strength into captivity, his glory into the adversary’s hand. 62 He also gave his people over to the sword, and was angry with his inheritance. 63 Fire devoured their young men. Their virgins had no wedding song. 64 Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows couldn’t weep. 65 Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep, like a mighty man who shouts by reason of wine. 66 He struck his adversaries backward. He put them to a perpetual reproach. 67 Moreover he rejected the tent of Joseph, and didn’t choose the tribe of Ephraim, 68 But chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved. 69 He built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth which he has established forever. 70 He also chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; 71 from following the ewes that have their young, he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob, his people, and Israel, his inheritance. 72 So he was their shepherd according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).