Berean Standard Bible

Psalms 78:25-72

25Man ate the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.26He stirred the east wind from the heavens and drove the south wind by His might.27He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.28He felled them in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.29So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them what they craved.

30Yet before they had filled their desire,with the food still in their mouths,31God’s anger flared against them,and He put to death their strongestand subdued the young men of Israel.

32In spite of all this, they kept on sinning;despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.33So He ended their days in futility,1and their years in sudden terror.34When He slew them, they would seek Him;they repented and searched for God.35And they remembered that God was their Rock,that God Most High2 was their Redeemer.

36But they deceived Him with their mouths,and lied to Him with their tongues.37Their hearts were disloyal to Him,and they were unfaithful to His covenant.

38And yet He was compassionate;He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them.He often restrained His angerand did not unleash His full wrath.39He remembered that they were but flesh,a passing breeze that does not return.

40How often they disobeyed Him in the wildernessand grieved Him in the desert!41Again and again they tested Godand provoked the Holy One of Israel.42They did not remember His power3—the day He redeemed them from the adversary,43when He performed His signs in Egyptand His wonders in the fields of Zoan.

44He turned their rivers to blood,and from their streams they could not drink.45He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,and frogs that devastated them.46He gave their crops to the grasshopper,the fruit of their labor to the locust.47He killed their vines with hailstonesand their sycamore-figs with sleet.448He abandoned their cattle to the hailand their livestock to bolts of lightning.

49He unleashed His fury against them,wrath, indignation, and calamity—a band of destroying angels.50He cleared a path for His anger;He did not spare them from deathbut delivered their lives to the plague.51He struck all the firstborn of Egypt,the virility in the tents of Ham.

52He led out His people like sheepand guided them like a flock in the wilderness.53He led them safely, so they did not fear,but the sea engulfed their enemies.54He brought them to His holy land,to the mountain His right hand had acquired.55He drove out nations before themand apportioned their inheritance;He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

56But they tested and disobeyed God Most High,for they did not keep His decrees.57They turned back and were faithless like their fathers,twisted like a faulty bow.58They enraged Him with their high placesand provoked His jealousy with their idols.

59On hearing it, God was furiousand rejected Israel completely.60He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,the tent He had pitched among men.61He delivered His strength to captivity,and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.62He surrendered His people to the swordbecause He was enraged by His heritage.63Fire consumed His young men,and their maidens were left without wedding songs.64His priests fell by the sword,but their widows could not lament.

65Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.66He beat back His foes;He put them to everlasting shame.67He rejected the tent of Josephand refused the tribe of Ephraim.68But He chose the tribe of Judah,Mount Zion, which He loved.69He built His sanctuary like the heights,like the earth He has established forever.

70He chose David His servantand took him from the sheepfolds;71from tending the ewes He brought himto be shepherd of His people Jacob,of Israel His inheritance.72So David shepherded them with integrity of heartand guided them with skillful hands.

Read all of Psalms 78

Notes

1. Psalms 78:33 Or in vapor ↩
2. Psalms 78:35 Hebrew El-Elyon ↩
3. Psalms 78:42 Or His hand ↩
4. Psalms 78:47 Or frost or driving rain ↩

Notes

Commentaries on Psalms 78