Psalms 78:38-72

³⁸But he is full of pity: he pardons sin and destroys not. Often he turns his anger away, without stirring his wrath at all.

³⁹So he remembered that they were but flesh, breath that passes and does not return.

⁴⁰But how often they rebelled in the desert, and caused him grief in the wilderness,

⁴¹tempting God again and again, provoking the Holy One of Israel.

⁴²They did not remember his strength, nor the day he redeemed from the foe,

⁴³how he set his signs in Egypt, in the country of Zoan his wonders.

⁴⁴He turned their canals into blood, their streams undrinkable.

⁴⁵He sent forth flies, which devoured them; frogs, too, which destroyed them.

⁴⁶Their crops he gave to the caterpillar, and the fruits of their toil to the locust.

⁴⁷He slew their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost.

⁴⁸He delivered their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to bolts of fire.

⁴⁹He let loose his hot anger among them, fury and wrath and distress, a band of destroying angels.

⁵⁰He cleared a path for his anger, did not spare them from death, but gave them over to pestilence.

⁵¹He struck down all the first-born in Egypt, the first fruits of their strength in the tents of Ham.

⁵²He led forth his people like sheep, he was guide to his flock in the desert.

⁵³Securely he led them, and free from fear, while their foes were drowned in the sea.

⁵⁴To his holy realm he brought them, to the mountain his right hand had purchased.

⁵⁵He drove out the nations before them, and allotted their land for possession, and their tents for Israel to live in.

⁵⁶Yet they tempted and angered the Most High God, they did not observe his decrees.

⁵⁷They drew back, false like their ancestors; they failed like a treacherous bow.

⁵⁸Their shrines stirred him to anger, their idols moved him to jealousy.

⁵⁹When God heard of this, he was furious, and he spurned Israel utterly.

⁶⁰He abandoned his home in Shiloh, the tent he had pitched among people.

⁶¹He gave his strength up to captivity, his glory to the hands of the foe.

⁶²He gave his people to the sword, he was furious with his own.

⁶³Fire devoured their young men, and their maidens had no marriage-song.

⁶⁴Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows could not weep.

⁶⁵Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a warrior flushed with wine;

⁶⁶and he beat back his foes, putting them to perpetual scorn.

⁶⁷He disowned the tent of Joseph, he rejected the tribe of Ephraim;

⁶⁸but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves.

⁶⁹And he built like the heights his sanctuary, like the earth which he founded forever.

⁷⁰And he chose David his servant, taking him from the sheepfolds.

⁷¹From the mother-ewes he brought him, to be shepherd to Jacob his people, and to Israel his inheritance.

⁷²With upright heart did he shepherd them, and with skilful hands did he guide them.