Psalms 78:32-71

³²For all this, they sinned still, and believed not in his marvellous works;

³³And he consumed their days in vanity, and their years in terror.

³⁴When he slew them, then they sought him, and returned and sought early after God;

³⁵And they remembered that God was their rock, and God, the Most High, their redeemer.

³⁶But they flattered him with their mouth, and lied unto him with their tongue;

³⁷For their heart was not firm toward him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant.

³⁸But he was merciful: he forgave the iniquity, and destroyed them not; but many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his fury:

³⁹And he remembered that they were flesh, a breath that passeth away and cometh not again.

⁴⁰How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert!

⁴¹And they turned again and tempted God, and grieved the Holy One of Israel.

⁴²They remembered not his hand, the day when he delivered them from the oppressor,

⁴³How he set his signs in Egypt, and his miracles in the field of Zoan;

⁴⁴And turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, that they could not drink;

⁴⁵He sent dog-flies among them, which devoured them, and frogs, which destroyed them;

⁴⁶And he gave their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labour unto the locust;

⁴⁷He killed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with hail-stones;

⁴⁸And he delivered up their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to thunderbolts.

⁴⁹He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and distress, — a mission of angels of woes.

⁵⁰He made a way for his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

⁵¹And he smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the first-fruits of their vigour in the tents of Ham.

⁵²And he made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock;

⁵³And he led them safely, so that they were without fear; and the sea covered their enemies.

⁵⁴And he brought them to his holy border, this mountain, which his right hand purchased;

⁵⁵And he drove out the nations before them, and allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

⁵⁶But they tempted and provoked God, the Most High, and kept not his testimonies,

⁵⁷And they drew back and dealt treacherously like their fathers: they turned like a deceitful bow.

⁵⁸And they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images.

⁵⁹God heard, and was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel:

⁶⁰And he forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh, the tent where he had dwelt among men,

⁶¹And gave his strength into captivity, and his glory into the hand of the oppressor;

⁶²And delivered up his people unto the sword, and was very wroth with his inheritance:

⁶³The fire consumed their young men, and their maidens were not praised in nuptial song;

⁶⁴Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.

⁶⁵Then the Lord awoke as one out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth aloud by reason of wine;

⁶⁶And he smote his adversaries in the hinder part, and put them to everlasting reproach.

⁶⁷And he rejected the tent of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim,

⁶⁸But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved;

⁶⁹And he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth which he hath founded for ever.

⁷⁰And he chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds:

⁷¹From following the suckling-ewes, he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.