Psalm 78
The full text of Psalm 78 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
A maskil of Asaph.
1 Give ear, my people, to my instruction;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter riddles from of old—
3 things we have heard and known,
that our ancestors told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children;
to the coming generation we will recount
the praises of the LORD and his strength,
and the wonders he has done.
5 He established a testimony in Jacob
and set a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to make known to their children,
6 so that the next generation would know—
children yet unborn—
who would rise and tell their own children.
7 Then they would place their confidence in God
and not forget the deeds of God
but keep his commands,
8 and not be like their ancestors—
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation that did not set its heart firm,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
9 The sons of Ephraim, armed bowmen,
turned back on the day of battle.
10 They did not keep God's covenant
and refused to walk in his law.
11 They forgot his deeds
and his wonders that he had shown them.
12 Before their ancestors he worked marvels
in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 He split the sea and brought them through;
he made the waters stand like a wall.
14 He led them with the cloud by day
and all night with a fiery light.
15 He split rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink as from the great deep.
16 He brought streams out of the rock
and made water flow down like rivers.
17 Yet they sinned still more against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the dry land.
18 They tested God in their heart
by demanding food for their appetite.
19 They spoke against God, saying,
"Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
20 Look—he struck the rock and water gushed out,
streams overflowed.
But can he also give bread?
Can he provide meat for his people?"
21 Therefore the LORD heard and was furious;
a fire was kindled against Jacob,
and anger rose against Israel,
22 because they did not believe in God
and did not trust in his salvation.
23 Yet he commanded the skies above
and opened the doors of heaven.
24 He rained down manna for them to eat
and gave them the grain of heaven.
25 Mortals ate the bread of angels;
he sent them food in abundance.
26 He set loose the east wind in the heavens
and drove the south wind by his power.
27 He rained meat on them like dust,
winged birds like the sand of the seas.
28 He let them fall in the midst of their camp,
all around their dwellings.
29 They ate and were well filled,
for he brought them what they craved.
30 They had not turned from their craving,
their food was still in their mouths,
31 when God's anger rose against them.
He killed the sturdiest among them
and struck down the young men of Israel.
32 Despite all this they still sinned
and did not believe in his wonders.
33 So he ended their days in futility
and their years in terror.
34 When he killed them, they sought him;
they turned and searched earnestly for God.
35 They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God their redeemer.
36 But they flattered him with their mouths
and lied to him with their tongues.
37 Their heart was not steadfast toward him;
they were not faithful to his covenant.
38 Yet he, being compassionate,
atoned for guilt and did not destroy.
Many times he turned back his anger
and did not stir up all his wrath.
39 He remembered that they were flesh,
a wind that passes and does not return.
40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland!
41 Again and again they tested God
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42 They did not remember his hand—
the day he redeemed them from the foe,
43 when he set his signs in Egypt
and his wonders in the field of Zoan.
44 He turned their rivers to blood,
and their streams—they could not drink.
45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
and frogs that destroyed them.
46 He gave their crops to the locust
and their labor to the swarming locust.
47 He killed their vines with hail
and their sycamores with frost.
48 He gave over their cattle to the hail
and their livestock to bolts of lightning.
49 He unleashed on them the heat of his anger—
fury and indignation and distress,
a band of destroying angels.
50 He leveled a path for his anger;
he did not spare them from death
but gave their lives over to plague.
51 He struck every firstborn in Egypt,
the first fruits of strength in the tents of Ham.
52 Then he led out his people like sheep
and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
53 He led them in safety, and they were not afraid,
but the sea covered their enemies.
54 He brought them to his holy territory,
this mountain his right hand had won.
55 He drove out nations before them
and apportioned them an inheritance by lot;
he settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
56 But they tested and rebelled against the Most High God
and did not keep his testimonies.
57 They turned back and acted faithlessly like their ancestors;
they twisted aside like a faulty bow.
58 They provoked him with their high places
and made him jealous with their carved images.
59 God heard and was furious;
he utterly rejected Israel.
60 He abandoned the tabernacle at Shiloh,
the tent he had pitched among mortals.
61 He delivered his strength into captivity,
his splendor into the hand of the foe.
62 He gave his people over to the sword
and was furious with his inheritance.
63 Fire consumed their young men,
and their young women had no wedding songs.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
and their widows could not weep.
65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
like a warrior shouting from wine.
66 He beat back his foes;
he put on them everlasting disgrace.
67 He rejected the tent of Joseph
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
68 but chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which he loved.
69 He built his sanctuary like the heights,
like the earth he established forever.
70 He chose David his servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
71 from following the nursing ewes he brought him
to shepherd Jacob his people,
Israel his inheritance.
72 He shepherded them with a blameless heart
and guided them with the skill of his hands.
Translation notes (13)
- Psalm 78:2a Hebrew mashal, 'parable', and chidot, 'riddles', introduce not cryptic sayings but a long historical recital running from the exodus to David. Matthew 13:35 cites this verse as prophecy fulfilled in Jesus's parables; the attribution fits the Asaph superscription, since Asaph is called a seer in 2 Chronicles 29:30.
- Psalm 78:9a No specific battle is identified; proposals include the loss of the ark at Shiloh in Ephraimite territory (1 Samuel 4) and the raid recounted in 1 Chronicles 7:20-22, but the psalm may intend Ephraim's failure emblematically, anticipating God's rejection of that tribe in favor of Judah and Zion in verses 67-68. The Hebrew phrase describing the archers is compressed, literally 'armed ones, shooters of the bow'.
- Psalm 78:12a Zoan, Hebrew Tso'an (צֹעַן), is the city the Septuagint renders as Tanis, located in the northeastern Nile Delta. Numbers 13:22 notes it was built seven years after Hebron, and it served as a royal center of Egypt's later dynasties. The psalmist names it as the setting of the plagues, placing the exodus wonders in Egypt's own seat of power.
- Psalm 78:24a Hebrew degan-shamayim, 'grain of heaven', applies dagan, the ordinary word for cultivated cereal grain, to the manna, presenting the wilderness food as a harvest yielded by heaven itself rather than by tilled ground. The idiom anticipates the next verse's 'bread of angels' and echoes the manna narrative of Exodus 16:4, where bread is likewise said to rain from heaven.
- Psalm 78:25a Hebrew lechem abbirim is literally 'bread of the mighty ones'; abbir elsewhere describes warriors, bulls, and stallions. The Septuagint rendered the phrase arton angelon, 'bread of angels', taking the mighty ones as heavenly beings, and this ancient interpretation is followed here.
- Psalm 78:38a Kipper (כפר), 'atoned', is the verb of sacrificial expiation used throughout Leviticus for the covering or purging of sin. Its subject here is God himself, who effects for guilt what the cult ordinarily accomplished, rather than merely pardoning it; hence 'atoned for guilt' preserves the sacrificial weight of the Hebrew.
- Psalm 78:44a Psalm 78:44–51 recounts the plagues in a different order and number than Exodus 7–12: blood begins the list, but flies precede frogs, and gnats, boils, and darkness are omitted. The psalm is a poetic recital shaped for memory and emphasis, moving from the first plague to the death of the firstborn, not a chronological catalog.
- Psalm 78:51a The phrase 'tents of Ham' is a poetic designation for Egypt, since Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, is listed as a son of Ham in Genesis 10:6; the same idiom appears in Psalm 105:23 and 27. 'First fruits of strength' translates reshit onim, a Hebrew idiom for the firstborn son as the initial evidence of a father's procreative vigor, as in Genesis 49:3 and Deuteronomy 21:17.
- Psalm 78:54a The Hebrew har-zeh, 'this mountain', is ambiguous: it may denote Mount Zion, anticipating the psalm's climax in the choice of Zion and David, or the hill country of Canaan as a whole, since Hebrew har can designate an entire highland region. The following verse, describing the conquest and settlement, permits either sense; the translation preserves the ambiguity.
- Psalm 78:60a Shiloh, in the territory of Ephraim, housed Israel's sanctuary from the settlement period until the ark was captured by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4). The psalm treats that catastrophe as God's own abandonment of his dwelling, a precedent Jeremiah later invoked against misplaced confidence in the Jerusalem temple (Jeremiah 7:12-14).
- Psalm 78:63a Hebrew hullalu, literally 'were not praised', from halal (הלל), 'to praise'. The idiom refers to the songs sung in praise of a bride at her wedding; because the young men had died in war, the women went unmarried and unsung. The rendering 'had no wedding songs' makes this cultural background explicit.
- Psalm 78:65a The Hebrew mitronen (מִתְרוֹנֵן) is a rare form of ranan, 'to shout aloud', occurring only here in the Masoretic Text. The bold anthropomorphism pictures God as a warrior roused to battle cries by wine, an image of sudden, overwhelming vigor after apparent inaction; the Septuagint softens it to a man recovering from wine.
- Psalm 78:67a The tent of Joseph alludes to the sanctuary at Shiloh, located in Ephraimite territory and named as abandoned earlier in the psalm. Ephraim, the leading tribe descended from Joseph, had held religious and political primacy; the psalm presents its displacement by Judah and Zion as God's deliberate choice, culminating in the election of David.
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