Psalms 78:38-64

38But he is compassionate. He forgave their sin. He did not destroy them. He restrained his anger many times. He did not display all of his fury.

39He remembered that they were only flesh and blood, a breeze that blows and does not return.

40How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness! How often they caused him grief in the desert!

41Again and again they tested God, and they pushed the Holy One of Israel to the limit.

42They did not remember his power— the day he freed them from their oppressor,

43when he performed his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders in the fields of Zoan.

44He turned their rivers into blood so that they could not drink from their streams.

45He sent a swarm of flies that bit them and frogs that ruined them.

46He gave their crops to grasshoppers and their produce to locusts.

47He killed their vines with hail and their fig trees with frost.

48He let the hail strike their cattle and bolts of lightning strike their livestock.

49He sent his burning anger, rage, fury, and hostility against them. He sent an army of destroying angels.

50He cleared a path for his anger. He did not spare them. He let the plague take their lives.

51He slaughtered every firstborn in Egypt, the ones born in the tents of Ham when their fathers were young.

52But he led his own people out like sheep and guided them like a flock through the wilderness.

53He led them safely. They had no fear while the sea covered their enemies.

54He brought them into his holy land, to this mountain that his power had won.

55He forced nations out of their way and gave them the land of the nations as their inheritance. He settled the tribes of Israel in their own tents.

56They tested God Most High and rebelled against him. They did not obey his written instructions.

57They were disloyal and treacherous like their ancestors. They were like arrows shot from a defective bow.

58They made him angry because of their illegal worship sites. They made him furious because they worshiped idols.

59When God heard, he became furious. He completely rejected Israel.

60He abandoned his dwelling place in Shiloh, the tent where he had lived among humans.

61He allowed his power to be taken captive and handed his glory over to an oppressor.

62He let swords kill his people. He was furious with those who belonged to him.

63Fire consumed his best young men, so his virgins heard no wedding songs.

64His priests were cut down with swords. The widows ⌞of his priests⌟ could not even weep ⌞for them⌟.