Psalm 78

Psalms 78:1

The Hebrew title, which the reader floor does not show, reads Maschil of Asaph, a term the commentators read as a teaching or instructive psalm, matching the summons that opens it. Give ear, O my people, to my law calls the whole nation to a lesson rather than a private prayer, my law standing for the teaching that follows rather than the Sinai code alone. Asaph writes here as Israel's historian, setting the pattern the rest of the psalm carries out.

Psalms 78:2-4

I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old is quoted at Matt 13:35 of Christ teaching the crowds in parables, the Gospel citing Asaph's own words for what the Lord was doing that day. The history that follows is called a parable because its facts carry a lesson beyond themselves, dark sayings meaning riddles that need unfolding rather than secrets kept back. Verses 3 and 4 set the chain of transmission the psalm exists to secure, fathers telling sons so that the generation to come does not lose what was heard.

Psalms 78:5-8

he established a testimony in Jacob: The purpose of the transmission is stated three times over, that the children yet unborn should know the works of God and not repeat their fathers' history, a stubborn and rebellious generation whose heart was not set aright. Gill notes that the testimony in Jacob and the law in Israel are the same revelation under two names, given at Sinai and committed to memory across the generations that followed. The whole burden of the psalm is this failure of transmission, corrected by the very psalm that names it.

Psalms 78:9-16

Ephraim armed and carrying bows yet turning back in the day of battle opens the recital as a preview of the whole nation's pattern, strength without steadfastness, before the psalm goes back to Egypt to explain it. The wonders that follow, the sea divided into a heap, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, the rock cloven in the wilderness for water, are the works Ephraim's fathers had already forgotten by the time of that lost battle. Delitzsch reads the tribe named first because the psalm's later verses turn from Ephraim's inheritance to Judah's, making this opening failure the seed of that later rejection.

Psalms 78:17-22

They sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness moves the recital from Egypt to Sinai's own camp, where the people tempted God by asking meat for their lust and doubted whether he could furnish a table in the wilderness. The question is asked after the sea and the rock, so the unbelief is not ignorance but forgetfulness, and the Lord's wrath answers it directly, a fire kindled against Jacob. Barnes notes the demand as the sin, not the hunger itself, since the manna had already met the need the quail request went beyond.

Psalms 78:23-29

Though he had commanded the clouds from above answers the doubt of the previous unit with the gift itself, manna called the corn of heaven and, in verse 25, angels' food, the bread the psalm treats as heavenly rather than merely providential. The quail follow on an east wind and a south wind, rained upon the camp as dust and as the sand of the sea, so that the people ate and were well filled, given their own desire in full measure. Spurgeon reads the abundance as the point: God answered the complaint past what justice required, which makes the judgment of the following verses the harder to read.

Psalms 78:30-31

While their meat was yet in their mouths turns the previous feast into the moment of judgment, the wrath of God falling on the fattest and the chosen men of Israel before the meal was finished. Henry reads the timing as deliberate, the plague striking mid-appetite so that the desire itself, not merely its excess, is judged. The generation that doubted God's table dies at that same table, still eating.

Psalms 78:32-39

For all this they sinned still traces one more turn of the pattern, disbelief answered by loss, loss answered by a brief return, hearts that flattered God with their mouth but were not stedfast in his covenant. Verse 38 turns the recital toward mercy rather than judgment, he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not, the psalm's clearest statement that the wilderness generation survived by patience rather than merit. He remembered that they were but flesh gives the ground of that patience, God's own allowance for human frailty rather than any change in the people themselves.

Psalms 78:40-43

How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness turns the recital reflective, naming the offense as forgetting rather than ignorance, they remembered not his hand nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. The psalm repeats Egypt and Zoan from verse 12, signaling that the plague list about to follow is not new material but the same history retold with more detail, aimed at a forgetting the first telling had not cured. Wesley notes the psalm's method here, repetition itself offered as the remedy for a people who forget the first time.

Psalms 78:44-51

The plague list runs the exodus signs in compressed order, the rivers turned to blood, flies and frogs sent to destroy, the crops given to caterpillar and locust, vines struck by hail and sycomores by frost, cattle and flocks given to hail and hot thunderbolts, ending at the firstborn struck in the tabernacles of Ham. The order and selection differ from Exodus's own account, and the commentators read this as poetic recital rather than a second chronicle, a shorter list chosen for the psalm's own rhythm rather than a strict count of ten. Clarke notes that evil angels among them in verse 49 reads the plagues as carried out under angelic agency, executing rather than originating the judgment.

Psalms 78:52-55

But made his own people to go forth like sheep returns the recital to its dominant figure, the flock led safely while the sea overwhelmed their enemies behind them. The border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain in verse 54 names the conquest's end point as Canaan's high ground rather than any one shrine, the inheritance divided among the tribes by line. Maclaren reads the shepherd language here as preparing the shepherd-king turn the psalm makes at its close, the flock led by God himself before it is ever led by David.

Psalms 78:56-58

Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God moves the recital into the land itself, the sin now high places and graven images rather than wilderness murmuring, the same restlessness under a settled roof. Gill reads the shift as the point, unbelief in the wilderness and idolatry in Canaan being one continuous unfaithfulness answered by one continuous patience. The provocation named here sets up the severe judgment that follows at Shiloh.

Psalms 78:59-64

So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh names the loss of the ark to the Philistines, his strength and his glory delivered into the enemy's hand rather than defended. The judgment falls on the nation broadly, fire consuming the young men, priests falling by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation, a silence the commentators read as grief too great, or too dangerous, for the ordinary rites. Delitzsch reads the withheld lamentation as the starkest line in the psalm, mourning itself a casualty of the disaster.

Psalms 78:65-66

Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep answers the previous silence with sudden reversal, sleep and drunkenness both figures for a God who seemed absent now acting like a warrior roused to battle. He smote his enemies in the hinder parts is a phrase the older commentators connect to the Philistines afflicted with tumors after taking the ark. Henry reads the figure of sleep as accommodation to human perception, God's patience described as delay rather than absence.

Psalms 78:67-72

Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph turns the recital's final page, Ephraim's tribe set aside as Shiloh had been, and Judah, the mount Zion which he loved, chosen in its place, the psalm's own account of the shift from the era of the judges to a kingdom settled at Zion. He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds closes the psalm by naming the shepherd who will lead the flock the whole recital has followed, from following the ewes great with young to feeding Jacob his people. Spurgeon reads the closing pair, integrity of heart and skilfulness of hands, as the psalm's own definition of good shepherding, inward honesty joined to competent care.