78 O my people, listen to my teaching. Open your ears to what I am saying. ^2-3 For I will show you lessons from our history, stories handed down to us from former generations. ⁴ I will reveal these truths to you so that you can describe these glorious deeds of Jehovah to your children and tell them about the mighty miracles he did. ⁵ For he gave his laws to Israel and commanded our fathers to teach them to their children, ⁶ so that they in turn could teach their children too. Thus his laws pass down from generation to generation. ⁷ In this way each generation has been able to obey his laws and to set its hope anew on God and not forget his glorious miracles. ⁸ Thus they did not need to be as their fathers were—stubborn, rebellious, unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.

⁹ The people of Ephraim, though fully armed, turned their backs and fled when the day of battle came ¹⁰ because they didn’t obey his laws. They refused to follow his ways. ^11-12 And they forgot about the wonderful miracles God had done for them and for their fathers in Egypt. ¹³ For he divided the sea before them and led them through! The water stood banked up along both sides of them! ¹⁴ In the daytime he led them by a cloud, and at night by a pillar of fire. ¹⁵ He split open the rocks in the wilderness to give them plenty of water, as though gushing from a spring. ¹⁶ Streams poured from the rock, flowing like a river!

¹⁷ Yet they kept on with their rebellion, sinning against the God who is above all gods. ¹⁸ They murmured and complained, demanding other food than God was giving them. ^19-20 They even spoke against God himself. “Why can’t he give us decent food as well as water?” they grumbled. ²¹ Jehovah heard them and was angry; the fire of his wrath burned against Israel ²² because they didn’t believe in God or trust in him to care for them, ²³ even though he commanded the skies to open—he opened the windows of heaven— ²⁴ and rained down manna for their food. He gave them bread from heaven! ²⁵ They ate angels’ food! He gave them all they could hold.

²⁶ And he led forth the east wind and guided the south wind by his mighty power. ²⁷ He rained down birds as thick as dust, clouds of them like sands along the shore! ²⁸ He caused the birds to fall to the ground among the tents. ²⁹ The people ate their fill. He gave them what they asked for. ³⁰ But they had hardly finished eating, and the meat was yet in their mouths, ³¹ when the anger of the Lord rose against them and killed the finest of Israel’s young men. ³² Yet even so the people kept on sinning and refused to believe in miracles. ³³ So he cut their lives short and gave them years of terror and disaster.

³⁴ Then at last, when he had ruined them, they walked awhile behind him; how earnestly they turned around and followed him! ³⁵ Then they remembered that God was their Rock—that their Savior was the God above all gods. ³⁶ But it was only with their words that they followed him, not with their hearts; ³⁷ their hearts were far away. They did not keep their promises. ³⁸ Yet he was merciful and forgave their sins and didn’t destroy them all. Many and many a time he held back his anger. ³⁹ For he remembered that they were merely mortal men, gone in a moment like a breath of wind.

⁴⁰ Oh, how often they rebelled against him in those desert years and grieved his heart. ⁴¹ Again and again they turned away and tempted God to kill them, and limited the Holy One of Israel from giving them his blessings. ⁴² They forgot his power and love and how he had rescued them from their enemies; ⁴³ they forgot the plagues he sent upon the Egyptians in Tanis^[a]— ⁴⁴ how he turned their rivers into blood so that no one could drink, ⁴⁵ how he sent vast swarms of flies to fill the land, and how the frogs had covered all of Egypt!

⁴⁶ He gave their crops to caterpillars. Their harvest was consumed by locusts. ⁴⁷ He destroyed their grapevines and their sycamores with hail. ⁴⁸ Their cattle died in the fields, mortally wounded by huge hailstones from heaven. Their sheep were killed by lightning. ⁴⁹ He loosed on them the fierceness of his anger, sending sorrow and trouble. He dispatched against them a band of destroying angels. ⁵⁰ He gave free course to his anger and did not spare the Egyptians’ lives, but handed them over to plagues and sickness. ⁵¹ Then he killed the eldest son^[b] in each Egyptian family—he who was the beginning of its strength and joy.

⁵² But he led forth his own people like a flock, guiding them safely through the wilderness. ⁵³ He kept them safe, so they were not afraid. But the sea closed in upon their enemies and overwhelmed them. ⁵⁴ He brought them to the border of his land of blessing, to this land of hills he made for them. ⁵⁵ He drove out the nations occupying the land and gave each tribe of Israel its apportioned place as its home.

⁵⁶ Yet though he did all this for them, they still rebelled against the God above all gods and refused to follow his commands. ⁵⁷ They turned back from entering the Promised Land and disobeyed as their fathers had. Like a crooked arrow, they missed the target of God’s will. ⁵⁸ They made him angry by erecting idols and altars to other gods.

⁵⁹ When God saw their deeds, his wrath was strong and he despised his people. ⁶⁰ Then he abandoned his Tabernacle at Shiloh, where he had lived among mankind, ⁶¹ and allowed his Ark to be captured; he surrendered his glory into enemy hands. ⁶² He caused his people to be butchered because his anger was intense. ⁶³ Their young men were killed by fire, and their girls died before they were old enough to sing their wedding songs. ⁶⁴ The priests were slaughtered, and their widows died before they could even begin their lament. ⁶⁵ Then the Lord rose up as though awakening from sleep, and like a mighty man aroused by wine, ⁶⁶ he routed his enemies; he drove them back and sent them to eternal shame. ⁶⁷ But he rejected Joseph’s family, the tribe of Ephraim, ⁶⁸ and chose the tribe of Judah—and Mount Zion, which he loved. ⁶⁹ There he built his towering temple, solid and enduring as the heavens and the earth. ⁷⁰ He chose his servant David, taking him from feeding sheep ^71-72 and from following the ewes with lambs; God presented David to his people as their shepherd, and he cared for them with a true heart and skillful hands.