Psalm 78:32-72

Christian Standard Bible

³² Despite all this, they kept sinning
and did not believe his wondrous works.^(A)
33 He made their days end in futility,
their years in sudden disaster.^(B)
34 When he killed some of them,
the rest began to seek him;
they repented and searched for God.^(C)
35 They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God, their Redeemer.^(D)
36 But they deceived him with their mouths,
they lied to him with their tongues,^(E)
37 their hearts were insincere toward him,
and they were unfaithful to his covenant.^(F)
38 Yet he was compassionate;
he atoned for their iniquity
and did not destroy them.
He often turned his anger aside
and did not unleash^[a] all his wrath.^(G)
39 He remembered that they were only flesh,
a wind that passes and does not return.^(H)

⁴⁰ How often they rebelled against him
in the wilderness
and grieved him in the desert.
⁴¹ They constantly tested God^(I)
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.^(J)
42 They did not remember his power shown
on the day he redeemed them from the foe,^(K)
43 when he performed his miraculous signs in Egypt
and his wonders in the territory of Zoan.^(L)
44 He turned their rivers into blood,
and they could not drink from their streams.^(M)
45 He sent among them swarms of flies,^(N)
which fed on them,
and frogs, which devastated them.^(O)
46 He gave their crops to the caterpillar
and the fruit of their labor to the locust.^(P)
47 He killed their vines with hail
and their sycamore fig trees with a flood.
⁴⁸ He handed over their livestock to hail
and their cattle to lightning bolts.^(Q)
49 He sent his burning anger against them:
fury, indignation, and calamity—
a band of deadly messengers.^[b](R)
50 He cleared a path for his anger.
He did not spare them from death
but delivered their lives to the plague.^(S)
51 He struck all the firstborn^(T) in Egypt,
the first progeny of the tents of Ham.^(U)
52 He led his people out like sheep
and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.^(V)
53 He led them safely, and they were not afraid;
but the sea covered their enemies.^(W)
54 He brought them to his holy territory,
to the mountain his right hand acquired.^(X)
55 He drove out nations before them.^(Y)
He apportioned their inheritance by lot
and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.^(Z)

⁵⁶ But they rebelliously tested the Most High God,
for they did not keep his decrees.^(AA)
57 They treacherously turned away like their ancestors;
they became warped like a faulty bow.^(AB)
58 They enraged him with their high places
and provoked his jealousy with their carved images.^(AC)
59 God heard and became furious;
he completely rejected Israel.^(AD)
60 He abandoned the tabernacle at Shiloh,
the tent where he resided among mankind.^(AE)
61 He gave up his strength to captivity
and his splendor to the hand of a foe.^(AF)
62 He surrendered his people to the sword
because he was enraged with his heritage.^(AG)
63 Fire consumed his chosen young men,
and his young women had no wedding songs.^[c](AH)
64 His priests fell by the sword,
and the widows could not lament.^(AI)

⁶⁵ The Lord awoke as if from sleep,
like a warrior from the effects of wine.^(AJ)
66 He beat back his foes;
he gave them lasting disgrace.^(AK)
67 He rejected the tent of Joseph
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
⁶⁸ He chose instead the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which he loved.^(AL)
69 He built his sanctuary like the heights,
like the earth that he established forever.^(AM)
70 He chose David his servant
and took him from the sheep pens;^(AN)
71 he brought him from tending ewes
to be shepherd over his people Jacob—
over Israel, his inheritance.^(AO)
72 He shepherded them with a pure heart
and guided them with his skillful hands.^(AP)