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78. Psalm 78

1 My people, hear my teaching;
   listen to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a parable;
   I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
3 things we have heard and known,
   things our ancestors have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their descendants;
   we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
   his power, and the wonders he has done.
5 He decreed statutes for Jacob
   and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
   to teach their children,
6 so the next generation would know them,
   even the children yet to be born,
   and they in turn would tell their children.
7 Then they would put their trust in God
   and would not forget his deeds
   but would keep his commands.
8 They would not be like their ancestors—
   a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose hearts were not loyal to God,
   whose spirits were not faithful to him.

    9 The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows,
   turned back on the day of battle;
10 they did not keep God’s covenant
   and refused to live by his law.
11 They forgot what he had done,
   the wonders he had shown them.
12 He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors
   in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and led them through;
   he made the water stand up like a wall.
14 He guided them with the cloud by day
   and with light from the fire all night.
15 He split the rocks in the wilderness
   and gave them water as abundant as the seas;
16 he brought streams out of a rocky crag
   and made water flow down like rivers.

    17 But they continued to sin against him,
   rebelling in the wilderness against the Most High.
18 They willfully put God to the test
   by demanding the food they craved.
19 They spoke against God;
   they said, “Can God really
   spread a table in the wilderness?
20 True, he struck the rock,
   and water gushed out,
   streams flowed abundantly,
but can he also give us bread?
   Can he supply meat for his people?”
21 When the LORD heard them, he was furious;
   his fire broke out against Jacob,
   and his wrath rose against Israel,
22 for they did not believe in God
   or trust in his deliverance.
23 Yet he gave a command to the skies above
   and opened the doors of the heavens;
24 he rained down manna for the people to eat,
   he gave them the grain of heaven.
25 Human beings ate the bread of angels;
   he sent them all the food they could eat.
26 He let loose the east wind from the heavens
   and by his power made the south wind blow.
27 He rained meat down on them like dust,
   birds like sand on the seashore.
28 He made them come down inside their camp,
   all around their tents.
29 They ate till they were gorged—
   he had given them what they craved.
30 But before they turned from what they craved,
   even while the food was still in their mouths,
31 God’s anger rose against them;
   he put to death the sturdiest among them,
   cutting down the young men of Israel.

    32 In spite of all this, they kept on sinning;
   in spite of his wonders, they did not believe.
33 So he ended their days in futility
   and their years in terror.
34 Whenever God slew them, they would seek him;
   they eagerly turned to him again.
35 They remembered that God was their Rock,
   that God Most High was their Redeemer.
36 But then they would flatter him with their mouths,
   lying to him with their tongues;
37 their hearts were not loyal to him,
   they were not faithful to his covenant.
38 Yet he was merciful;
   he forgave their iniquities
   and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
   and did not stir up his full wrath.
39 He remembered that they were but flesh,
   a passing breeze that does not return.

    40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
   and grieved him in the wasteland!
41 Again and again they put God to the test;
   they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
42 They did not remember his power—
   the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,
43 the day he displayed his signs in Egypt,
   his wonders in the region of Zoan.
44 He turned their river into blood;
   they could not drink from their streams.
45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
   and frogs that devastated them.
46 He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
   their produce to the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail
   and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
48 He gave over their cattle to the hail,
   their livestock to bolts of lightning.
49 He unleashed against them his hot anger,
   his wrath, indignation and hostility—
   a band of destroying angels.
50 He prepared a path for his anger;
   he did not spare them from death
   but gave them over to the plague.
51 He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt,
   the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham.
52 But he brought his people out like a flock;
   he led them like sheep through the wilderness.
53 He guided them safely, so they were unafraid;
   but the sea engulfed their enemies.
54 And so he brought them to the border of his holy land,
   to the hill country his right hand had taken.
55 He drove out nations before them
   and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance;
   he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.

    56 But they put God to the test
   and rebelled against the Most High;
   they did not keep his statutes.
57 Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless,
   as unreliable as a faulty bow.
58 They angered him with their high places;
   they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
59 When God heard them, he was furious;
   he rejected Israel completely.
60 He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,
   the tent he had set up among humans.
61 He sent the ark of his might into captivity,
   his splendor into the hands of the enemy.
62 He gave his people over to the sword;
   he was furious with his inheritance.
63 Fire consumed their young men,
   and their young women had no wedding songs;
64 their priests were put to the sword,
   and their widows could not weep.

    65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
   as a warrior wakes from the stupor of wine.
66 He beat back his enemies;
   he put them to everlasting shame.
67 Then he rejected the tents of Joseph,
   he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
68 but he chose the tribe of Judah,
   Mount Zion, which he loved.
69 He built his sanctuary like the heights,
   like the earth that he established forever.
70 He chose David his servant
   and took him from the sheep pens;
71 from tending the sheep he brought him
   to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
   of Israel his inheritance.
72 And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
   with skillful hands he led them.

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5. He established a testimony in Jacob. 312312     Horsley considers this verse as a parenthesis. As the reception or approbation of any doctrine by men would not be a sufficient reason for yielding a firm assent to its truth, the prophet proceeds farther, and represents God as the author of what he brings forward. He declares, that the father’s were not led to instruct their children in these truths under the mere impulse of their own minds, but by the commandment of God. Some understand the words, He hath established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, as implying that God had established a decree in Jacob, to be observed as an inviolable rule, which was, that the deliverance divinely wrought for the people should be at all times in the mouth of every Israelite; but this seems to give too restricted a sense. I therefore consider statute, or testimony, and law, 313313     Dr Adam Clarke, by a testimony understands the various ordinances, rites, and ceremonies prescribed by the laws and by the word law, the moral law. as referring to the written law, which, however, was partly given for this end, that by the remembrance of their deliverance, the people, after having been once gathered into one body, might be kept in their allegiance to God. The meaning then is, that God not only acquired a right to the Jews as his people by his mighty power, but that he also sealed up his grace, that the knowledge of it might never be obliterated. And, undoubtedly, it was then registered as it were in public records, when the covenant was ratified by the written law, in order to assure the posterity of Abraham that they had been separated from all other nations. It would have been a matter of very small importance to have been acquainted with, or to have remembered the bare history of what had been done, had their eyes not been, at the same time, directed to the free adoption and the fruit of it. The decree then is this, That the fathers being instructed in the doctrine of the law themselves, should recount, as it were, from the mouth of God, to their children, that they had been not only once delivered, but also gathered into one body as his Church, that throughout all ages they might yield a holy and pure obedience to him as their deliverer. The reading of the beginning of the second clause of the verse properly is, Which he commanded, etc. But the relative אשר, asher, which, I have no doubt, is here put by way of exposition for namely, or that is, he commanded, etc. I have translated it for, which amounts to the same thing.
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