¹An Instructive Psalm of Asaph.

Listen, my people, to my law;

Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

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.

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.