Psalms 78: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm is a teacher's retelling of Israel's history, handed on so the next generation will trust God and not repeat their fathers' record. It runs from the plagues in Egypt and the crossing of the sea, through the water from the rock and the manna and the birds in the wilderness, to the people's repeated unfaithfulness and God's repeated anger and mercy. It ends with the loss of the tent at Shiloh, God's rejection of the tribe of Ephraim, his choice of Judah and Mount Zion, and his taking David from the sheepfolds to shepherd the nation.

Claim by Claim

1. 78:1
   • The psalm is a maskil, a contemplative instruction, belonging to Asaph.
   • The speaker calls his people to give ear to his instruction.
   • The speaker commands them to incline their ears to the words of his mouth.
2. 78:2
   • The speaker says he will open his mouth in a parable.
   • The speaker says he will pour forth riddles from ancient times.
3. 78:3
   • The things spoken are things we have heard and known.
   • Our fathers recounted these things to us.
4. 78:4
   • We will not hide these things from their children.
   • We will recount to the coming generation the praises of the LORD.
   • We will recount his might.
   • We will recount his wonders that he has done.
5. 78:5
   • He established a testimony in Jacob.
   • He set a law in Israel.
   • He commanded our fathers concerning it.
   • He commanded that they make these things known to their children.
6. 78:6
   • The purpose was that the coming generation would know them.
   • The purpose extended to children yet to be born.
   • Those children were to arise and recount them to their own children.
7. 78:7
   • The purpose was that they would set their confidence in God.
   • The purpose was that they would not forget the deeds of God.
   • The purpose was that they would keep his commandments.
8. 78:8
   • The purpose was that they would not be like their fathers.
   • Their fathers were a stubborn and rebellious generation.
   • That generation did not set its heart aright.
   • The spirit of that generation was not faithful to God.
9. 78:9
   • The sons of Ephraim were equipped and armed with bows.
   • The sons of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.
10. 78:10
    • They did not keep the covenant of God.
    • They refused to walk in his law.
11. 78:11
    • They forgot his deeds.
    • They forgot his wonders that he had shown them.
12. 78:12
    • He did a wonder in the sight of their fathers.
    • He did it in the land of Egypt.
    • He did it in the field of Zoan.
13. 78:13
    • He split the sea.
    • He made them pass through.
    • He made the waters stand up like a heap.
14. 78:14
    • He led them with a cloud by day.
    • He led them all the night with a light of fire.
15. 78:15
    • He split rocks in the wilderness.
    • He gave them drink abundantly, as from great deeps.
16. 78:16
    • He brought streams out of the rock.
    • He made waters run down like rivers.
17. 78:17
    • They went on sinning against him still more.
    • They rebelled against the Most High in the dry land.
18. 78:18
    • They tested God in their heart.
    • They tested him by asking food for their appetite.
19. 78:19
    • They spoke against God.
    • They asked whether God is able to set a table in the wilderness.
20. 78:20
    • They said he struck a rock and water gushed out.
    • They said streams overflowed.
    • They asked whether he can also give bread.
    • They asked whether he can provide flesh for his people.
21. 78:21
    • Therefore the LORD heard.
    • The LORD was enraged.
    • A fire was kindled against Jacob.
    • Anger also rose against Israel.
22. 78:22
    • They did not believe in God.
    • They did not trust in his salvation.
23. 78:23
    • He commanded the skies above.
    • He opened the doors of heaven.
24. 78:24
    • He rained manna on them to eat.
    • He gave them grain of heaven.
25. 78:25
    • Man ate the bread of mighty ones, understood as the food of angels.
    • He sent them provision to the full.
26. 78:26
    • He made an east wind set out in the heavens.
    • By his strength he drove the south wind.
27. 78:27
    • He rained flesh on them like dust.
    • He rained winged birds like the sand of the seas.
28. 78:28
    • He made it fall in the midst of their camp.
    • It fell all around their dwellings.
29. 78:29
    • They ate.
    • They were very full.
    • He brought them what they craved.
30. 78:30
    • They were not yet estranged from their craving.
    • Their food was still in their mouths.
31. 78:31
    • The anger of God rose against them.
    • He killed their stoutest men.
    • He struck down the chosen young men of Israel.
32. 78:32
    • In spite of all this they went on sinning.
    • They did not believe in his wonders.
33. 78:33
    • He brought their days to an end in emptiness.
    • He brought their years to an end in sudden terror.
34. 78:34
    • When he slew them, they sought him.
    • They turned back and sought God earnestly.
35. 78:35
    • They remembered that God was their rock.
    • They remembered that God Most High was their redeemer.
36. 78:36
    • They deceived him with their mouth.
    • They lied to him with their tongues.
37. 78:37
    • Their heart was not steadfast with him.
    • They were not faithful in his covenant.
38. 78:38
    • He is compassionate.
    • He covered over their iniquity.
    • He did not destroy them.
    • Many times he turned his anger away.
    • He did not stir up all his wrath.
39. 78:39
    • He remembered that they were flesh.
    • They are a wind that passes and does not return.
40. 78:40
    • They rebelled against him in the wilderness many times.
    • They grieved him in the desert.
41. 78:41
    • They turned back and tested God again.
    • They provoked the Holy One of Israel, the verb being obscure and rendered as setting a limit to him.
42. 78:42
    • They did not remember his hand.
    • They did not remember the day he redeemed them from the adversary.
43. 78:43
    • He set his signs in Egypt.
    • He set his wonders in the field of Zoan.
44. 78:44
    • He turned their rivers into blood.
    • They could not drink from their streams.
45. 78:45
    • He sent swarms of insects among them, which devoured them.
    • He sent frogs, which ruined them.
46. 78:46
    • He gave their produce to the devouring locust.
    • He gave the fruit of their labor to the locust swarm.
47. 78:47
    • He killed their vines with hail.
    • He killed their sycamore trees with an obscure form of frost or ice.
48. 78:48
    • He handed over their cattle to the hail.
    • He handed over their livestock to flashing bolts.
49. 78:49
    • He sent against them the burning of his anger.
    • He sent fury, indignation, and distress.
    • He sent a band of messengers of evil.
50. 78:50
    • He cleared a path for his anger.
    • He did not spare their life from death.
    • He handed their life over to the plague.
51. 78:51
    • He struck every firstborn in Egypt.
    • He struck the first of their strength in the tents of Ham.
52. 78:52
    • He made his own people set out like sheep.
    • He guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
53. 78:53
    • He led them in safety.
    • They were not afraid.
    • The sea covered their enemies.
54. 78:54
    • He brought them to the border of his holy place.
    • He brought them to this mountain.
    • His right hand had acquired that mountain.
55. 78:55
    • He drove out nations before them.
    • He allotted them an inheritance by measuring line.
    • He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
56. 78:56
    • They tested God Most High.
    • They rebelled against God Most High.
    • They did not keep his testimonies.
57. 78:57
    • They turned back.
    • They acted treacherously like their fathers.
    • They twisted aside like a deceitful bow.
58. 78:58
    • They provoked him to anger with their high places.
    • They moved him to jealousy with their carved images.
59. 78:59
    • God heard.
    • God was enraged.
    • God utterly rejected Israel.
60. 78:60
    • He abandoned the dwelling at Shiloh.
    • That tent was the one he had pitched among men.
61. 78:61
    • He gave his strength into captivity.
    • He gave his glory into the hand of the adversary.
62. 78:62
    • He handed his people over to the sword.
    • He was enraged with his inheritance.
63. 78:63
    • Fire consumed his young men.
    • His virgins were not celebrated with wedding song.
64. 78:64
    • His priests fell by the sword.
    • His widows did not weep.
65. 78:65
    • Then the Lord awoke like one asleep.
    • He awoke like a warrior shouting because of wine.
66. 78:66
    • He struck his adversaries backward.
    • He put them to everlasting reproach.
67. 78:67
    • He rejected the tent of Joseph.
    • He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68. 78:68
    • He chose the tribe of Judah.
    • He chose Mount Zion, which he loved.
69. 78:69
    • He built his sanctuary like the heights.
    • He built it like the earth, which he founded forever.
70. 78:70
    • He chose David his servant.
    • He took him from the sheepfolds.
71. 78:71
    • He brought him from following the nursing ewes.
    • He brought him to shepherd Jacob his people.
    • He brought him to shepherd Israel his inheritance.
72. 78:72
    • He shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart.
    • He guided them with the skillfulness of his hands.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

78:1

KJV "law" here renders Hebrew *torah*, which means teaching or instruction of any kind, not only legislation. A parent or a sage could give *torah*; it is not necessarily a legal code.

78:2

Two Hebrew terms sit behind this line. *Mashal* (KJV "parable") covers proverbs, comparisons, taunt-songs and instructive tales, any speech that makes its point by likeness. *Hidah* (KJV "dark saying") is a riddle or puzzle, something whose meaning has to be worked out. The psalm that follows is a retelling of national history, so the words signal a story told to be pondered rather than a story told for information.

78:3

"Fathers" throughout this psalm means ancestors or forefathers in general, not fathers as opposed to mothers.

78:4

LORD printed in small capitals marks the personal name of God in Hebrew, written with four letters usually given as YHWH. Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud rather than pronounce it, and English Bibles kept that custom by printing LORD.

78:5

Jacob and Israel are the same person: Genesis records Jacob being renamed Israel, and his descendants were called the children of Israel. Poetry uses the two names interchangeably for the whole nation, which is why the same statement is made twice here in different words. "Testimony" translates a word for a formal, binding declaration of terms, the stipulations of an agreement, set out so they can be witnessed and remembered.

78:9

Ephraim was the largest of the northern tribes, and its name is often used to stand for the northern tribes as a group. No battle matching this description is recorded elsewhere in the Bible, and interpreters have never agreed on which event, if any, is meant; the psalm may be speaking of a general failure rather than one occasion.

78:10

A covenant was a formal sworn agreement, close in form to a treaty between a ruler and a subject people: it set out obligations on both sides, was ratified by oath and ceremony, and was expected to bind later generations.

78:12

Zoan is the city the Egyptians called Djanet and the Greeks called Tanis, in the north-eastern Nile delta. It served at times as an Egyptian royal residence, so naming it locates the events in the seat of Egyptian power.

78:13

This refers to the escape from Egypt through the sea, told in Exodus 14. The Hebrew name of that sea, *yam suph*, means "sea of reeds"; "Red Sea" comes from the ancient Greek translation.

78:14

The cloud by day and fire by night are the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire of Exodus 13, described there as going ahead of the people to show the route.

78:15

Two occasions are recorded in which Moses struck a rock and water came out for the people to drink, at Rephidim (Exodus 17) and at Meribah (Numbers 20).

78:17

"Most High" translates *Elyon*, an ancient title meaning the highest or uppermost. It was in use as a divine title in the region before Israel existed, and Hebrew poetry keeps it as a formal, elevated name.

78:18

In 1611 English, "lust" meant any strong craving or appetite, with no necessarily sexual sense, and "meat" meant food of any kind, not flesh in particular. KJV "tempted" also means put to the test or tried out, not enticed into wrongdoing.

78:19

To "furnish a table" is to set out a full meal for guests. The sarcasm is aimed at God as a host: nobody lays on a banquet in open desert.

78:20

"Flesh" here means meat, animal food, set against "bread" as the two halves of a proper meal. The people are conceding the water miracle and demanding a bigger one.

78:21

"Wroth" is the old adjective matching the noun wrath: enraged.

78:22

"Salvation" here translates a Hebrew word meaning rescue or deliverance from concrete danger, being got out of a tight place. It is the ordinary word for being saved from an enemy or a disaster.

78:23

The sky is pictured as a solid vault with openings in it, through which rain, snow and hail are let down from the waters stored above. "Doors of heaven" is that picture, not a figure of speech about a palace.

78:24

Manna is the food described in Exodus 16, a fine flake-like substance found on the ground each morning. The name is explained there from the people's question *man hu*, "what is it?" KJV "corn" means grain of any kind, in 1611 English "corn" was the general word for cereal crops, not maize.

78:25

The Hebrew says literally "bread of the mighty ones," and who the mighty ones are is disputed: the ancient Greek translation took it as angels, which the KJV follows, while others take it as "the bread of the strong," food fit for warriors.

78:26

The hot east wind blows off the desert, and migrating quail cross the Sinai peninsula on seasonal winds each spring and autumn. The psalm treats the ordinary flight path of the birds as something God steered.

78:27

The birds are quail, described in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11 as arriving on the wind in enormous numbers and dropping around the camp.

78:30

"They were not estranged from their lust" means they had not yet grown tired of the thing they craved. The craving was still on them when the disaster hit.

78:31

KJV "the fattest of them" renders "their fat ones," meaning the well-fed and robust, the physically strongest, not the overweight. The episode referred to is in Numbers 11, where the place was afterwards named Kibroth-hattaavah, "graves of craving."

78:33

"Vanity" in 1611 English means emptiness or a puff of breath, something with no substance. It has nothing to do with being vain about your looks.

78:34

KJV "enquired early" translates a verb built on the word for dawn. It carries the sense of seeking eagerly and urgently rather than literally seeking at daybreak.

78:35

"Redeemer" translates *go'el*, a legal role in Israelite family law: the nearest relative who was obliged to buy back a kinsman sold into slavery, buy back family land that had been sold off, or take up a relative's cause at law. The word is about a family duty to recover what was lost, and it carries that legal flavor when applied to God.

78:38

"Iniquity" means wrongdoing, and also the guilt that comes with it. "Stir up all his wrath" pictures anger as something that can be roused fully or held partly back.

78:39

"Flesh" here means human and mortal, made of material that wears out. The wind image is about how quickly a life passes, not about anyone's character.

78:41

KJV "limited the Holy One of Israel" is a guess at a rare Hebrew verb whose meaning is uncertain. Most modern translators take it as "provoked," "pained" or "grieved"; the older sense of putting a limit on God is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.

78:43

These signs and wonders were the amazing things God did in Egypt. They are often called the ten plagues, ten big troubles sent on Egypt.

78:44

Verses 44 to 51 run through the plagues of Egypt told in Exodus 7 to 12, though the psalm gives seven of them, in a different order from Exodus and with some details unique to this poem.

78:45

"Divers sorts of" is 1611 English for "various kinds of." The Hebrew word *arob* names a swarm of some insect but does not say which; "flies" is a traditional guess, and ancient translators variously understood biting flies, gnats or a mixture of creatures.

78:46

KJV "caterpiller" and "locust" render two Hebrew words for crop-destroying insects, most likely locusts at different stages of growth or different kinds of locust. Neither is a caterpillar in the modern sense.

78:47

The sycomore is the sycamore-fig, a large fruit tree common in Egypt and the lowlands of Israel. Its figs were a cheap staple food, and its timber was widely used. It is unrelated to the tree called sycamore in Britain or North America today.

78:48

KJV "hot thunderbolts" renders a Hebrew word of uncertain meaning: proposals include lightning flashes, fever, or plague. Translations differ, and the sense cannot be settled.

78:49

The Hebrew word for angel means simply "messenger." The phrase is literally "a sending of messengers of evil" (that is, agents dispatched to bring disaster), rather than angels who are themselves wicked, which is how the KJV wording reads to a modern ear.

78:50

"Pestilence" is a fast-spreading deadly disease, an epidemic.

78:51

"Tabernacles" in the KJV means tents or dwellings generally, not the tent-sanctuary of Israel. Ham is one of Noah's sons in Genesis, listed there as the ancestor of the Egyptians and their neighbors, so "tents of Ham" is a poetic way of saying Egypt. "The chief of their strength" translates an idiom for the firstborn son, understood as the first product of a father's vigor.

78:54

"This mountain" is not identified. It may mean the hill country of Canaan as a whole, or Mount Zion in Jerusalem, which the psalm names in verse 68; the Hebrew allows either. "Purchased" translates a verb meaning to acquire or take possession of, not necessarily to buy with money.

78:55

KJV "heathen" simply means "the nations" (the other peoples, foreigners) and carries none of the modern sense of irreligious or uncivilised. "Divided an inheritance by line" refers to the surveyor's measuring cord used to mark out land allotments when territory was shared among the tribes, described in Joshua 13 to 19.

78:57

A wooden bow that had warped threw its arrows off target. A "deceitful bow" is one that looks fine in your hand and fails you at the moment you need it, which is the point of the comparison.

78:58

"High places" were open-air shrines, usually on hilltops or raised platforms, with an altar and standing stones. They were the ordinary local places of worship across the region. "Graven images" are carved figures, the word describes how they were made, by cutting or chiselling.

78:60

Shiloh, about twenty miles north of Jerusalem in the territory of Ephraim, was where the tent-sanctuary and the ark stood before the temple was built. KJV "tabernacle" here means that portable tent shrine.

78:61

"His strength" and "his glory" are ways of naming the ark of the covenant, the chest that stood in the sanctuary. The reference is to 1 Samuel 4, where the Philistines captured it in battle and carried it away.

78:62

Calling Israel God's "inheritance" uses the language of land allotment: an inheritance was the share of territory permanently belonging to a family. The nation is spoken of as the portion allotted to God himself.

78:63

The Hebrew says the young women "were not praised," which is generally understood as the wedding songs sung in a bride's honor. With the young men dead, there were no marriages to celebrate.

78:64

Formal mourning for the dead was loud, public and expected, often with hired professional mourners. That the widows could not perform it marks the disaster as overwhelming, either because the deaths came too fast, or because the survivors were themselves in danger.

78:65

The comparison is to a soldier roused from sleep and roaring, the Hebrew word is for a warrior or champion, and the shout is a battle cry. The image of wine indicates the sudden loud force of the shout, not drunkenness in the modern sense.

78:66

KJV "smote his enemies in the hinder parts" means struck them backwards, driving them into retreat; the Hebrew says he struck his foes "behind." Some readers connect it with 1 Samuel 5, where the Philistines who held the ark were afflicted with tumors.

78:67

Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, became tribes in their own right, so "the tent of Joseph" and "the tribe of Ephraim" name overlapping things. Shiloh, the sanctuary abandoned in verse 60, stood in Ephraim's territory; the verse is describing the shift of the central sanctuary away from the north.

78:68

Zion is the ridge in Jerusalem on which the fortress and later the temple stood. Judah was the leading southern tribe and David's own tribe.

78:69

The Hebrew reads "like the heights", the comparison is to mountains or to the height of the sky, which the KJV took as "high palaces." Which is meant is disputed.

78:70

Kings across the ancient Near East were routinely titled shepherds of their people, so lifting David out of literal sheep pens to rule is a deliberate play on that stock royal image.

78:71

Calling a ruler the shepherd of his people was standard political language across the ancient Near East, used of kings in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan long before David. KJV "feed" translates the verb "to shepherd," which covers the whole work of pasturing, guarding and leading a flock.

78:72

"Integrity" here means a whole, undivided heart: honest, with no double dealing. "Skilfulness of his hands" is practical competence, the trained skill of a shepherd or a soldier, so the psalm credits David with both good intent and real ability.