Psalm 78:43–68

⁴³They did not remember his miraculous signs in Egypt,

his wonders on the plain of Zoan.

⁴⁴For he turned their rivers into blood,

so no one could drink from the streams.

⁴⁵He sent vast swarms of flies to consume them

and hordes of frogs to ruin them.

⁴⁶He gave their crops to caterpillars;

their harvest was consumed by locusts.

⁴⁷He destroyed their grapevines with hail

and shattered their sycamore-figs with sleet.

⁴⁸He abandoned their cattle to the hail,

their livestock to bolts of lightning.

⁴⁹He loosed on them his fierce anger—

all his fury, rage, and hostility.

He dispatched against them

a band of destroying angels.

⁵⁰He turned his anger against them;

he did not spare the Egyptians’ lives

but ravaged them with the plague.

⁵¹He killed the oldest son in each Egyptian family,

the flower of youth throughout the land of Egypt.

⁵²But he led his own people like a flock of sheep,

guiding them safely through the wilderness.

⁵³He kept them safe so they were not afraid;

but the sea covered their enemies.

⁵⁴He brought them to the border of his holy land,

to this land of hills he had won for them.

⁵⁵He drove out the nations before them;

he gave them their inheritance by lot.

He settled the tribes of Israel into their homes.

⁵⁶But they kept testing and rebelling against God Most High.

They did not obey his laws.

⁵⁷They turned back and were as faithless as their parents.

They were as undependable as a crooked bow.

⁵⁸They angered God by building shrines to other gods;

they made him jealous with their idols.

⁵⁹When God heard them, he was very angry,

and he completely rejected Israel.

⁶⁰Then he abandoned his dwelling at Shiloh,

the Tabernacle where he had lived among the people.

⁶¹He allowed the Ark of his might to be captured;

he surrendered his glory into enemy hands.

⁶²He gave his people over to be butchered by the sword,

because he was so angry with his own people—his special possession.

⁶³Their young men were killed by fire;

their young women died before singing their wedding songs.

⁶⁴Their priests were slaughtered,

and their widows could not mourn their deaths.

⁶⁵Then the Lord rose up as though waking from sleep,

like a warrior aroused from a drunken stupor.

⁶⁶He routed his enemies

and sent them to eternal shame.

⁶⁷But he rejected Joseph’s descendants;

he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.

⁶⁸He chose instead the tribe of Judah,

and Mount Zion, which he loved.