Psalm 78[a]
God’s Goodness in the Face of Ingratitude
1 A maskil[b] of Asaph.
[c]Give ear, my people, to my teaching;
pay attention to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in parables[d]
and expound the mysteries of the past.
3 [e]These things we have heard and know,
for our ancestors have related them to us.
4 We will not conceal them from our children;
we will relate them to the next generation,
the glorious and powerful deeds of the Lord
and the wonders he has performed.
5 He instituted a decree in Jacob
and established a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to make known to their descendants,
6 so that they would be known to future generations,
to children yet to be born.
In turn they were to tell their children,
7 so that they would place their trust in God,
and never forget his works
but keep his commandments.
8 Nor were they to imitate their ancestors,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart[f] was not steadfast
and whose spirit was unfaithful to God.
9 [g]The Ephraimites, who were skilled archers,
fled in terror on the day of battle.[h]
10 They failed to keep God’s covenant
and refused to live in accord with his law.
11 They forgot the works he had done,
the wonders he had performed for them.
12 He worked marvels in the sight of their ancestors
in the land of Egypt, in the Plain of Zoan.[i]
13 He divided the sea so that they could pass,
heaping up the waters as a mound.
14 He led them with a cloud by day,
and with the light of a fire by night.
15 He split open rocks in the wilderness
and gave them water to drink from limitless depths.
16 He brought forth streams from a rocky crag
and caused water to flow down in torrents.
17 [j]But they still sinned[k] against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the wilderness.
18 They tested God’s patience
by demanding the food they craved.[l]
19 They railed against God, saying:
“Can God provide a banquet in the wilderness?
20 Certainly when he struck the rock,
water gushed forth and the streams overflowed.
But can he also give us bread
or provide meat for his people?”[m]
21 When the Lord heard this, he was filled with anger;
his fire blazed forth against Jacob,
and his wrath mounted against Israel,
22 because they had no faith in God
and put no trust in his saving might.
23 Yet he issued a command to the skies above
and opened the doors of the heavens.
24 He rained down manna for them to eat,
giving them the grain of heaven.
25 Mere mortals ate the bread of angels;[n]
he sent them an abundance of provisions.
26 He made the east wind blow in the heavens
and brought forth the south wind in force.
27 He rained down meat upon them like dust,
winged birds like the sands on the seashore.
28 He let them fall within the camp,
all around their tents.
29 They ate and were completely satisfied,
for he had given them what they desired.
30 But when they did not curb their cravings,
even while the food was in their mouths,
31 the anger of God blazed up against them;
he slew their strongest warriors
and laid low the chosen of Israel.
32 [o]Despite this, they continued to sin;
they put no faith in his wonders.
33 So he brought their days to an abrupt end
and cut off their years with sudden terror.[p]
34 When death afflicted them,
they sought him;
they searched eagerly for God.
35 They remembered that God was their Rock,[q]
that God Most High was their Redeemer.
36 However, while they flattered him with their mouths
and lied to him with their tongues,
37 their hearts[r] were not right with him,
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
38 Even so, he was compassionate toward them;
he forgave their guilt
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he held back his anger,
unwilling to stir up his rage.
39 For he remembered that they were flesh,
like a breath of wind that does not return.
40 [s]How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and pained him in the wasteland.
41 Again and again they tested God’s patience,
provoking the Holy One of Israel.[t]
42 They did not keep in mind his power
or the day when he delivered them from their oppressor,
43 when he manifested his wonders in Egypt
and his portents in the Plain of Zoan.
44 [u]He turned their rivers 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 assigned their harvest to the caterpillars
and their produce to the locusts.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail
and their sycamore trees with frost.
48 He exposed their cattle to hailstones
and their flocks to bolts of lightning.
49 He sent upon them his blazing anger,
wrath, fury, and hostility,
a band of destroying angels.[v]
50 He gave his anger free rein;
he did not spare them from death
but delivered their lives to the plague.
51 He struck down all the firstborn in Egypt,
the firstfruits of their manhood in the tents of Ham.[w]
52 Then he led forth his people like sheep
and guided them through the wilderness like a flock.
53 He led them in safety, and they were not afraid,
while the sea engulfed their enemies.
54 He brought them to his holy land,
to the mountain his right hand had purchased.
55 He drove out the nations before them,
apportioning a heritage for each of them
and settling the tribes of Israel in their tents.[x]
56 [y]Even so, they put God to the test
and rebelled against the Most High,
refusing to observe his decrees.
57 They turned away and were disloyal like their ancestors;
they were as unreliable as a faulty bow.
58 They angered him with their high places[z]
and made him jealous with their idols.
59 When God saw this, he became enraged
and rejected Israel totally.[aa]
60 He forsook his dwelling in Shiloh,[ab]
the tent where he dwelt among mortals.
61 He surrendered his might into captivity
and his glory[ac] into the hands of the enemy.
62 He abandoned his people to the sword
and vented his wrath on his own heritage.
63 Fire devoured their young men,
and their maidens had no wedding song.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
and their widows sang no lamentation.
65 [ad]Then the Lord awakened as from sleep,
like a warrior flushed from the effects of wine.
66 He struck his enemies and routed them,
inflicting perpetual shame on them.
67 He rejected the tent of Joseph
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68 Rather, he chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion,[ae] which he loved.
69 He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,
and like the earth[af] that he founded forever.
70 He chose David[ag] to be his servant
and took him from the sheepfolds.
71 From tending sheep he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel, his heritage.
72 He shepherded them with an unblemished heart
and guided them with a knowing hand.[ah]
Footnotes
- Psalm 78:1 This lengthy sermon is given us as a lesson in wisdom: if the People of God wish to understand their destiny, they must reflect on their origins and meditate on the Exodus, which is a history of divine grace and human infidelity. In effect, their ancestors never responded with anything but ingratitude to the miracles that God multiplied for them. He rolls back the sea and brings water from a rock; the people already clamor for another prodigy (vv. 12-20). Filled with the manna and the quail, the people still murmur (vv. 23-30)! Then the Lord becomes angry and metes out punishment, but he soon grants pardon to them out of pity for their human weakness (vv. 31-39). On their behalf, he had also brought about the plagues (vv. 43-51), and guided them through the wilderness and into the Promised Land (vv. 52-56). Still, offenses multiplied; so he also resorted anew to chastisement. But ultimately, he reserved for his people the privileged holy place, Zion, and the shepherd after his own heart, David (vv. 59-72).
Thus, the psalm emphasizes the infidelity of Ephraim (the ancestor of the Samaritans), the choice of Judah, and the call of David. Its lesson is that in spite of the successive about-faces of the people, God accomplished his design.
Is this not also our history? To acknowledge God’s love does not keep us from infidelities; at such times, the word of God challenges us but also brings pardon, and the Eucharist is given to sustain our steps. In Jesus, the new David and Good Shepherd, the People of God find a model and perfect guide to the new Promised Land, the heavenly Jerusalem, where the Father waits. - Psalm 78:1 Maskil: see note on Ps 32:1a. Asaph: see notes on Pss 73–89.
- Psalm 78:1 Remembrance of the great deeds of the Lord should serve to strengthen the people’s faith in his power and fidelity. Thus, they will not forget what the Lord has done for their ancestors, which was a blessing for their descendants, and what God has demanded from his covenant people.
- Psalm 78:2 Parables in Hebrew means comparisons, or any sayings with deeper meaning, which are to be understood via the hidden comparison; in this case, the parable is the whole psalm. This passage is used by Mt 13:35 as a foreshadowing of Christ’s teaching in parables (see also Ps 49:5; Ezek 17:2; 24:3).
- Psalm 78:3 Israel is the people of tradition (see Deut 4:9; 32:7; Job 8:8; 15:18; Isa 38:19; Joel 1:3); what its people hand down is, above all, the remembrance of the Exodus (see Ex 10:2; 13:14) and the covenant statutes (Deut 4:9-14; 6:20-25).
- Psalm 78:8 Heart: see note on Ps 4:8.
- Psalm 78:9 The psalmist stresses that the northern kingdom, in which Ephraim had the lead, has been unfaithful to the covenant (a theme of the prophets Amos and Hosea). It constitutes the last in a series of infidelities committed by Israel.
- Psalm 78:9 There is no record of flight from battle on the part of the Ephraimites; it may be a metaphor for Ephraim’s failure to keep the covenant.
- Psalm 78:12 Zoan: a city in the Nile delta, capital of Egypt at the time of the Exodus.
- Psalm 78:17 The psalmist indicates that the Israelites rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness despite all kinds of marvels that he worked on their behalf. This led to the Lord’s anger against them.
- Psalm 78:17 Still sinned: the psalmist has mentioned no sin, but because of the theme of water in verse 16, he is reminded of the people’s murmuring over the lack of water at Marah (see Ex 15:24).
- Psalm 78:18 See Ex 16:2f.
- Psalm 78:20 See Ex 16:2f; Num 11:4.
- Psalm 78:25 Bread of angels: literally, “bread of mighty ones,” which clearly refers to angels (see Ps 103:20; Wis 16:20; see also Jn 6:32, 50; 1 Cor 10:3). Psalm 105:40 speaks of “bread from heaven” (see Deut 8:3).
- Psalm 78:32 The people’s infidelity to the Lord continued unabated throughout the entire sojourn in the wilderness (see Isa 26:16; 29:13; Hos 5:15; 8:1). However, the Lord tempered his punishment, for he knew they shared the inherent weakness of human beings (see Pss 65:4; 85:4; 103:13f; Ex 32:14; Num 14:20; 21:7ff; Isa 48:9; Ezek 20:22).
- Psalm 78:33 Nonetheless, the Lord decreed that the faithless generation of the Exodus would never set foot on the Promised Land (see Num 14:22f, 28-35).
- Psalm 78:35 Rock: see note on Ps 18:3.
- Psalm 78:37 Hearts: see note on Ps 4:8.
- Psalm 78:40 The Israelites continued to rebel against God in the wilderness. They failed to recall how he had delivered them from Egypt by such wonders as the plagues and the passage through the Red Sea. Nonetheless, the Lord went on to lead them to the conquest and settlement of the Promised Land.
- Psalm 78:41 Holy One of Israel: see note on Ps 71:22.
- Psalm 78:44 The psalmist is not concerned about a complete, chronological, and exact narrative of the plagues. He gives them in a different order and enumeration, while also omitting the third, fifth, sixth, and ninth (see Ex 7–12).
- Psalm 78:49 Destroying angels: the psalmist here generalizes the theme of the “destroyer” of the firstborn (see Ex 12:23), personifying the Lord’s wrath, fury, and hostility as agents of his anger (see Ex 9:14; Deut 32:24; Job 20:23).
- Psalm 78:51 Tents of Ham: usually linked with Egypt (see Pss 105:23, 27; 106:21f; Gen 10:6).
- Psalm 78:55 The psalmist here summarizes the story of the Conquest told in Joshua.
- Psalm 78:56 This part, like its predecessors, begins with the remembrance of Israel’s sins and evokes the time of Samuel and Saul in the Book of Judges. Because of the people’s infidelity, God rejected Israel (see Jer 7:12ff).
- Psalm 78:58 High places: the Canaanites were accustomed to building altars to their gods on hills (high places), a custom followed by the Israelites who built altars to Yahweh on hills. However, this led to the adoption of pagan practices and idols by God’s people. Jealous: see Ex 20:5 (“I . . . am . . . a jealous God.”).
- Psalm 78:59 The psalmist is not speaking here of a permanent abandonment of Israel by God.
- Psalm 78:60 Shiloh: a shrine located in Ephraim (see Jdg 21:19) that was the center of Israelite worship from the time of Joshua (see Jos 18:1, 8; 21:1f; Jdg 18:31; 1 Sam 1:3; Jer 7:12; 26:6). It was destroyed by the Philistines when the Ark of the Covenant was captured (see 1 Sam 4:1-11).
- Psalm 78:61 His might . . . his glory: the divine attributes of which the Ark of the Covenant was the symbol (see Ps 132:17; 1 Sam 4:19ff; 2 Chr 6:41).
- Psalm 78:65 After the Israelites had been cleansed by the divine chastisement, the Lord had mercy on them and fought by their side once more in vanquishing their enemies. But afterward, God chose Judah instead of Ephraim as the leading tribe, Mount Zion instead of Shiloh as the royal seat (the place of his sanctuary), and David instead of Saul as his king and regent. David is the ideal shepherd (see Ezek 34:23; 37:24), the Lord’s anointed (see Ps 89:21), and the type of the Messiah to come (see Ps 110). What the Lord did for the people in the wilderness, David did in his name for the people of Judah.
- Psalm 78:68 He chose . . . Mount Zion: see Ps 132:11, 17.
- Psalm 78:69 High heavens . . . earth: the Lord built his sanctuary to last like the heavens and the earth (see note on Ps 24:2) and to reflect his glory as they do (see Pss 19:2; 29:9; 97:6).
- Psalm 78:70 He chose David: see Ps 132.
- Psalm 78:72 The Prophets regarded Israel, led by David, as the hope of God’s people (see Ezek 34:23; 37:24; Mic 5:2)—fulfilled in Jesus (see Mt 2:6; Jn 10:11; Rev 7:17).