Psalm 78: Part II Quoties exacerbaverunt

40 How often the people disobeyed him in the wilderness *
and offended him in the desert!

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

42 They did not remember his power *
in the day when he ransomed them from the enemy;

43 How he wrought his signs in Egypt *
and his omens in the field of Zoan.

44 He turned their rivers into blood, *
so that they could not drink of their streams.

45 He sent swarms of flies among them, which ate them up, *
and frogs, which destroyed them.

46 He gave their crops to the caterpillar, *
the fruit of their toil to the locust.

47 He killed their vines with hail *
and their sycamores with frost.

48 He delivered their cattle to hailstones *
and their livestock to hot thunderbolts.

49 He poured out upon them his blazing anger: *
fury, indignation, and distress,
a troop of destroying angels.

50 He gave full rein to his anger;
he did not spare their souls from death; *
but delivered their lives to the plague.

51 He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, *
the flower of manhood in the dwellings of Ham.

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

53 He led them to safety, and they were not afraid; *
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

54 He brought them to his holy land, *
the mountain his right hand had won.

55 He drove out the Canaanites before them
and apportioned an inheritance to them by lot; *
he made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

56 But they tested the Most High God, and defied him, *
and did not keep his commandments.

57 They turned away and were disloyal like their fathers; *
they were undependable like a warped bow.

58 They grieved him with their hill-altars *
and provoked his displeasure with their idols.

59 When God heard this, he was angry *
and utterly rejected Israel.

60 He forsook the shrine at Shiloh, *
the tabernacle where he had lived among his people.

61 He delivered the ark into captivity, *
his glory into the adversary's hand.

62 He gave his people to the sword *
and was angered against his inheritance.

63 The fire consumed their young men; *
there were no wedding songs for their maidens.

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

65 Then the Lord woke as though from sleep, *
like a warrior refreshed with wine.

66 He struck his enemies on the backside *
and put them to perpetual shame.

67 He rejected the tent of Joseph *
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;

68 He chose instead the tribe of Judah *
and Mount Zion, which he loved.

69 He built his sanctuary like the heights of heaven, *
like the earth which he founded for ever.

70 He chose David his servant, *
and took him away from the sheepfolds.

71 He brought him from following the ewes, *
to be a shepherd over Jacob his people
and over Israel his inheritance.

72 So he shepherded them with a faithful and true heart *
and guided them with the skillfulness of his hands.

Web Author: Charles Wohlers
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