PSALM 78
A reflective poem of Asaph
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings
of old that hide important truth; Which we have heard and
known and our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, but we will tell
to the generation to come the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
and His might, and the wonderful works He has performed.
Dance of Grace
Mark Keathley
Mark Keathley
For He established a testimony, an express precept in Jacob and
appointed law in Israel, commanding our fathers that they should
make the great facts of God's dealing with Israel known to their children.
That the generation to come might know them, that the children still
to be born might arise and recount them to their children.
That they might set their hope in God and not forget the works
of God, but might keep His commandments.
And not be of their fathers-a stubborn and rebellious generation, a
generation that set not their hearts aright nor prepared their hearts to
know God, and whose spirits were not steadfast and faithful to God.
The children of Ephraim were armed and carrying bows, yet they
turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God
and refused to walk according to His law; And forgot His works
and His wonders that He had shown them.
Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt,
in the field of Zoan where Pharaoh resided. He divided the Red Sea
and caused them to pass through it, and He made the waters stand like a heap.
In the daytime also He led them with a pillar of cloud and all the night
with a light of fire. He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them
drink abundantly as out of the deep. He brought streams also out
of the rock at Rephidim and Kadesh and caused the waters to run
down like rivers. Yet they still went on to sin against Him by provoking
and rebelling against the Most High in the wilderness.
And they tempted God in their hearts by asking for food according
to their selfish desire and appetite. Yes, they spoke against God;
they said, Can God furnish the food for a table in the wilderness?
Behold, He did smite the rock so that waters gushed out and the
streams overflowed; but can He give bread also?
Can He provide flesh for His people?
Therefore, when the Lord heard, He was full of wrath; a fire
was kindled against Jacob, His anger mounted up against Israel.
Because in God they believed not, they relied not on Him,
they adhered not to Him, and they trusted not in His salvation,
His power to save.
Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven;
And He rained down upon them manna to eat and gave them heaven's grain.
Everyone ate the bread of the mighty man, man ate angels' food;
God sent them meat in abundance.
He let forth the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by His power
He guided the south wind. He rained flesh also upon them like the dust,
and winged birds, quails, like the sands of the seas. And He let the
birds fall in the midst of the camp, round about their tents.
So they ate and were well filled; He gave them what they craved
and lusted after. But scarce had they stilled their craving, and while
their meat was yet in their mouths, The wrath of God came upon
them and slew the strongest and sturdiest of them and smote
down Israel's chosen youth.
In spite of all this, they sinned still more, for they believed not in
His wondrous works. Therefore their days He consumed like a breath,
in emptiness, falsity, and futility, and their years in terror and sudden haste.
When He slew some of them, the remainder inquired after Him diligently,
and they repented and sincerely sought God for a time.
And they earnestly remembered that God was their Rock, and the
Most High God their Redeemer.
Nevertheless they flattered Him with their mouths and lied to
Him with their tongues. For their hearts were not right or sincere with Him,
neither were they faithful and steadfast to His covenant.
But He, full of merciful compassion, forgave their iniquity and
destroyed them not; yes, many a time He turned His anger away and
did not stir up all His wrath and indignation.
For He earnestly remembered that they were but flesh, a wind
that goes and does not return. How often they defied and rebelled
against Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!
And time and again they turned back and tempted God,
provoking and incensing the Holy One of Israel.
They remembered not seriously the miracles of the working
of His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy.
How He wrought His miracles in Egypt and His wonders in
the field of Zoan where Pharaoh resided.
And turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that
they could not drink from them. He sent swarms of venomous flies
among them which devoured them and frogs which destroyed them.
He gave also their crops to the caterpillar and the fruit of their
labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, and their
sycamore trees with frost and great chunks of ice.
He caused them to shut up their cattle or gave them up also
to the hail and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.
He let loose upon them the fierceness of His anger, His wrath,
and indignation and distress, by sending a mission of angels
of calamity and woe among them.
He leveled and made a straight path for His anger, to give it
free course; He did not spare the Egyptian families from death
but gave their beasts over to the pestilence and the life of their
eldest over to the plague. He smote all the firstborn in Egypt,
the chief of their strength in the tents of the land of the sons of Ham.
But God led His own people forth like sheep and guided them
with a shepherd's care, like a flock in the wilderness.
And He led them on safely and in confident trust, so that they
feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
And He brought them to His holy border, the border of Canaan,
His sanctuary, even to this mountain, Zion, which His right
hand had acquired. He drove out the nations also before Israel
and allotted their land as a heritage, measured out and partitioned;
and He made the tribes of Israel to dwell in tents of those dispossessed.
Yet they tempted and provoked and rebelled against the Most High God
and kept not His testimonies.
But they turned back and dealt unfaithfully and treacherously like
their fathers; they were twisted like a warped and deceitful blow
that will not respond to the archer's aim.
For they provoked Him to righteous anger with their high places
for idol worship and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images.
When God heard this, He was full of holy wrath; and He utterly
rejected Israel, greatly abhorring and loathing her ways.
So that He forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh, the tent in
which He had dwelt among men and never returned to it again.
And delivered His strength and power, the ark of the covenant,
into captivity, and His glory into the hands of the Philistines.
He gave His people over also to the sword and was wroth
with His heritage, Israel. The fire of war devoured their
their young men, and their bereaved virgins were
not praised in a wedding song.
Their priests, Hophni and Phinehas fell by the sword, and their
widows made no lamentation, for the bodies came back not
from the scene of battle, and the widow of Phinehas also died that day.
Then the Lord awakened as from sleep, as a strong man whose
consciousness of power is heightened by wine. And He smote His
adversaries in the back as they fled; He put them to lasting shame
and reproach. Moreover, He rejected the tent of Joseph and chose
not the tribe of Ephraim, in which the tabernacle had been
accustomed to stand. But He chose the tribe of Judah as
Israel's leader, Mount Zion, which He loved,
to replace Shiloh as His capital.
And He built His sanctuary exalted, like the heights of
the heavens, and like the earth which He established forever.
He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds.
From tending the ewes that had their young He brought him
to be the shepherd of Jacob His people, of Israel His inheritance.
So David was their shepherd with an upright heart; he guided
them by the discernment and skillfulness which controlled his hands.
"Train up a child in the way he or she should go
and in keeping with their individual gift or bent,
and when they are old they will not depart from it."
Proverbs 22:6
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