The FarAboveAll translation of the Old Testament from the Masoretic Hebrew and Aramaic (WLC). See details on www.FarAboveAll.com.

Version 0.33.105, 15 February 2024

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Psalms Chapter 78

1An Instructive Psalm of Asaph.

Listen, my people, to my law;

Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

2I will open my mouth with a proverb;

I will utter riddles of ancient time,

3Which we have heard,

And we know them,

For our fathers related them to us.

4We will not hide them from their sons.

Up to the last generation we will relate the praiseworthy things of the Lord,

As well as his strength and his wondrous deeds

Which he has performed.

5Indeed, he has established a testimony in Jacob,

And he has set up a law in Israel,

Which he commanded our fathers

To make known to their sons,

6So that the last generation may know.

Sons that are to be born must rise up,

And tell their sons in turn.

7And they must put their hope in God

And not forget the works of God,

And they must keep his commandments.

8Furthermore they must not be like their fathers

– A refractory and rebellious generation,

A generation who did not prepare their heart,

And whose spirit was not faithful to God.

9The sons of Ephraim

– Armed archers –

Turned back on the day of battle.

10They did not keep God's covenant,

And they refused to walk in his law.

11And they forgot his works and his wonders

Which he had shown them.

12He worked marvels in the sight of their fathers,

In the land of Egypt

In the countryside of Zoan.

13He divided the sea and ushered them across;

He made the water stand like a mound,

14And he led them in the cloud by day,

And all night long by a fiery light.

15And he split rocks in the desert

So as to give drink as from a great depth.

16And he brought a stream out of hard terrain,

And he made waters flow down like rivers.

17But they still sinned against him again,

In rebelling against the Most High

In an arid land.

18And they tested God in their heart,

By asking for food for their appetite.

19So they spoke against God and they said,

“Can God lay a table in the desert?”

20Behold, he struck a rock,

And water flowed,

And streams overflowed.

“Is he able to provide bread too?

Can he prepare meat for his people?”

21So when the Lord heard it,

He became irate,

And a fire was kindled against Jacob,

And anger with Israel arose too.

22For they did not believe in God,

And they did not have faith in his salvation.

23Then he commanded the skies above,

And he opened the gates of the heavens.

24And he rained manna on them to eat,

And he gave them heavenly grain.

25Man ate the food of the mighty ones;

He sent them provisions to satiety.

26He set an east wind in motion in the sky,

And he drove a south wind by his strength.

27Then he rained meat on them like dust,

And winged fowl like the sand of the sea.

28And he made it fall in the middle of his encampment,

All around his tent sites.

29So they ate and were very much satiated,

For he had brought them what they desired.

30They were not averse to their desire.

When, with their food still in their mouths,

31God's anger arose over them,

He killed those of their company who were fat,

And he brought down the youths of Israel.

32In spite of all this they still sinned,

And they did not have faith in his wonders.

33So he ended their days in vacuity,

And their years in fear.

34When he was killing them,

They sought him,

And they diligently searched for God again.

35And they remembered that God was their rock,

And that the Most High God was their redeemer.

36Yet they dealt with him deceitfully with their mouths,

And they dealt with him dishonestly with their tongues.

37And their heart was not right with him,

And they were not faithful to his covenant.

38Yet he is merciful;

He expiates iniquity,

And he did not bring them to ruin.

And he went to great lengths in averting his anger,

And he did not arouse all his fury.

39For he remembered that they were flesh

– A wind that goes and does not return.

40How often they rebelled against him in the desert

And grieved him in the wasteland!

41Then they tempted God again;

They limited the holy one of Israel.

42They did not remember his intervention

– The day when he redeemed them from adversity,

43When he performed his signs in Egypt

And his miracles in the countryside of Zoan,

44When he changed their rivers to blood

So that they could not drink their liquids.

45He sent the gadfly on them to devour them,

And frogs to molest them.

46Then he gave their produce to the consuming locust,

And the results of their toil to the swarming locust.

47He destroyed their vines with hail,

And their sycamore fig trees with frost.

48And he consigned their cattle to hail,

And their livestock to bolts of lightning.

49He sent the fury of his anger on them

– Wrath and indignation and opposition,

And a deputation of harmful angels.

50Then he considered the course of his anger.

He did not spare their very selves from death,

And he consigned their life to pestilence.

51Then he struck down every firstborn in Egypt

– The prime of their strength in the tents of Ham.

52Then he moved his people like sheep,

And he led them like a flock in the desert.

53And he conducted them safely

So that they did not fear anything,

But the sea covered their enemies.

54And he brought them to the border of his sanctuary

– The mountain which his right hand had acquired.

55Then he drove out nations before them,

And he assigned them an inheritance by apportionment,

And he installed the tribes of Israel in their tents.

56But they tempted and rebelled against the Most High God,

And they did not keep his testimonies.

57And they slid back,

And they dealt treacherously like their fathers,

And they changed direction like a crooked bow shot.

58And they provoked him to anger with their idolatrous raised sites,

And they stirred him to jealousy with their carved images.

59God heard and became irate,

And he greatly disdained Israel.

60And he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh

– The tent he installed among men.

61And he delivered his strength into captivity,

And his splendour into the hand of an adversary.

62And he consigned his people to the sword,

Whilst he became irate over his inheritance.

63Fire consumed his young men,

And his virgins had no celebration.

64His priests fell by the sword,

And his widows did not lament.

65Then the Lord* awoke

As if from being asleep,

Like a warrior rejoicing from wine.

66And he beat his adversaries back;

He gave them age-abiding reproach.

67And he rejected the tent of Joseph,

And he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,

68But he chose the tribe of Judah,

And Mount Zion which he loves.

69And he built his sanctuary as an elevation,

Like the earth which he founded age-abidingly.

70Then he chose David his servant,

And he took him from the sheepfolds.

71He brought him from looking after dairy cattle

To tending Jacob his people

And Israel his inheritance.

72And he tended them wholeheartedly,

And he led them in his wise care.

Reference(s) in Chapter 78: v.2 ↔ Matthew 13:35 ● v.24 ↔ John 6:31.

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