Psalm 78

I Will Open My Mouth in Parables

(Matthew 13:34–35)

A Maskil ¹ of Asaph.

¹ Give ear, O my people, to my instruction; listen to the words of my mouth.

² I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the beginning,²

³ that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.

⁴ We will not hide them from their children but will declare to the next generation the praises of the LORD and His might and the wonders He has performed.

⁵ For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,

⁶ that the coming generation would know them— even children yet to be born— to arise and tell their own children

⁷ that they should put their confidence in God, not forgetting His works, but keeping His commandments.

⁸ Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

⁹ The archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.

¹⁰ They failed to 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 worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.

¹³ He split the sea and brought them through; He set the waters upright like a wall.

¹⁴ He led them with a cloud by day and with a light of fire all night.

¹⁵ He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.

¹⁶ He brought streams from the stone and made water flow down like rivers.

¹⁷ But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.

¹⁸ They willfully tested God by demanding the food they craved.

¹⁹ They spoke against God, saying, “Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?

²⁰ When He struck the rock, water gushed out and torrents raged. But can He also give bread or supply His people with meat?”

²¹ Therefore the LORD heard and was filled with wrath; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and His anger flared against Israel,

²² because they did not believe God or rely on His salvation.

²³ Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of the heavens.

²⁴ He rained down manna for them to eat; He gave them grain from heaven.³

²⁵ Man ate the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.

²⁶ He stirred the east wind from the heavens and drove the south wind by His might.

²⁷ He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.

²⁸ He felled them in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.

²⁹ So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them what they craved.

³⁰ Yet before they had filled their desire, with the food still in their mouths,

³¹ God’s anger flared against them, and He put to death their strongest and subdued the young men of Israel.

³² In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.

³³ So He ended their days in futility,⁴ and their years in sudden terror.

³⁴ When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God.

³⁵ And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High ⁵ was their Redeemer.

³⁶ But they deceived Him with their mouths, and lied to Him with their tongues.

³⁷ Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.

³⁸ And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath.

³⁹ He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.

⁴⁰ How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!

⁴¹ Again and again they tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

⁴² They did not remember His power ⁶— the day He redeemed them from the adversary,

⁴³ when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.

⁴⁴ He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink.

⁴⁵ He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.

⁴⁶ He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.

⁴⁷ He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet.⁷

⁴⁸ He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning.

⁴⁹ He unleashed His fury against them, wrath, indignation, and calamity— a band of destroying angels.

⁵⁰ He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but delivered their lives to the plague.

⁵¹ He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham.

⁵² He led out His people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.

⁵³ He led them safely, so they did not fear, but the sea engulfed their enemies.

⁵⁴ He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had acquired.

⁵⁵ He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

⁵⁶ But they tested and disobeyed God Most High, for they did not keep His decrees.

⁵⁷ They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.

⁵⁸ They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols.

⁵⁹ On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely.

⁶⁰ He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.

⁶¹ He delivered His strength to captivity, and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.

⁶² He surrendered His people to the sword because He was enraged by His heritage.

⁶³ Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs.

⁶⁴ His priests fell by the sword, but their widows could not lament.

⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.

⁶⁶ He beat back His foes; He put them to everlasting shame.

⁶⁷ He rejected the tent of Joseph and refused 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 He has established forever.

⁷⁰ He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;

⁷¹ from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance.

⁷² So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands.