Dual Panel1A maskil: for Asaph MY people, mark my teaching, listen to the words I am about to speak.
2I shall tell you a meaningful story; I shall expound the riddle of things past,
3things that we have heard and know, things our forefathers have recounted to us.
4They were not hidden from their descendants, who will repeat them to the next generation: the praiseworthy acts of the LORD and the wonders he has done.
5He laid on Jacob a solemn charge and established a rule in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their descendants,
6so that it might be known to a future generation, to children yet to be born, and they in turn would repeat it to their children.
7They were charged to put their trust in God, to hold his great acts ever in mind and to keep his commandments,
8and not to do as their forefathers did, a disobedient and rebellious generation, a generation with no firm purpose, with hearts not fixed steadfastly on God.
9The Ephraimites, bowmen all and marksmen, turned tail in the hour of battle.
10They had not kept God's covenant; they had refused to live by his law;
11they forgot the things he had done, the wonders he had shown them.
12As their fathers witnessed he performed wonderful deeds in Egypt, the region of Zoan:
13he divided the sea and brought them through; he heaped up the waters on either side.
14He led them with a cloud by day, and all night long with a glowing fire.
15He split the rock in the wilderness and gave them water to drink, abundant as the deep;
16he brought streams out of the crag and made water run down like torrents.
17But they sinned against him yet again: in the desert they defied the Most High,
18trying God's patience wilfully by demanding the food they craved.
19They spoke against God and said, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”
20When he struck a rock, water gushed out until the wadis overflowed; “But can he give bread as well?” they demanded. “Can he provide meat for his people?”
21When the LORD heard this, he was infuriated: fire raged against Jacob, anger blazed up against Israel,
22because they put no faith in God, no trust in his power to save.
23Then he gave orders to the skies above and threw open heaven's doors;
24he rained down manna for them to eat and gave them the grain of heaven.
25So everyone ate the bread of angels; he sent them food in plenty.
26He let loose the east wind from heaven and drove the south wind by his power;
27he rained meat down on them like a dust storm, birds flying thick as the sand of the seashore.
28He made them fall within the camp, all around their tents.
29The people ate and were well filled, for he had given them what they wanted.
30But still they wanted more, even while the food was in their mouths.
31Then the anger of God blazed up against them; he spread death among their strongest men and laid low the young men of Israel.
32In spite of all, they persisted in their sin and had no faith in his wonders.
33So he made their days end in emptiness and their years in terror.
34When he brought death among them, they began to seek him, and look eagerly for God once more;
35they remembered that God was their rock, that God Most High was their redeemer.
36But still they sought to beguile him with words and deceive him with their tongues;
37but they were not loyal to him in their hearts, nor were they faithful to his covenant.
38Yet he was merciful, wiping out guilt and not destroying. Time and again he restrained his wrath and did not give vent to his anger.
39He remembered that they were but mortal, a breath of air which passes by and does not return.
40How often they defied him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!
41Again and again they tried God's patience and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42They did not keep in mind his power or the day when he delivered them from the enemy,
43how he displayed his signs in Egypt, his portents in the region of Zoan.
44He turned their streams into blood, and they could not drink the running water.
45He sent swarms of flies which devoured them, and frogs which brought devastation;
46he gave their harvest over to locusts, their produce to the grubs;
47he devastated their vines with hailstones, their fig trees with torrents of rain;
48he abandoned their cattle to the plague, their animals to attacks of pestilence.
49He unleashed his blazing anger on them, wrath and enmity and rage, launching those messengers of evil.
50He opened a way for his fury; he did not spare them from death, but gave them up to the plague.
51He struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, the firstfruits of their manhood in the tents of Ham.
52He led out his own people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
53He led them in safety and they were not afraid, but their enemies were engulfed by the sea.
54He brought his people to his holy land, to the hill-country which his right hand had won.
55He drove out nations before them, allotting their lands to Israel as a possession and settling the tribes in their dwellings.
56Yet they provoked and defied God Most High, refusing to keep his solemn charges;
57they were renegades, faithless like their fathers, unreliable like a bow gone slack.
58They provoked him to anger with their shrines and roused his jealousy with their carved images.
59God heard and was enraged; he utterly rejected Israel.
60He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tabernacle in which he dwelt among mortals;
61he surrendered his strength to captivity, his pride into enemy hands;
62he gave his people to the sword, he was enraged with his own possession.
63Fire devoured their young men, and their maidens could raise no lament for them;
64their priests fell by the sword, and the widows among them could not weep.
65Then the Lord awoke as a sleeper wakes or a warrior flushed with wine;
66he struck his foes and drove them back, bringing perpetual shame upon them.
67He rejected the clan of Joseph and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
68but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved.
69He built his sanctuary high as the mountains, founded like the earth to last for ever.
70He chose David to be his servant and took him from the sheepfolds;
71he brought him from minding the ewes to be the shepherd of his people Jacob and of Israel his possession;
72he shepherded them in singleness of heart and guided them with a skilful hand.