A Remembered Rescue and a Repeatedly Forgotten Covenant

The heading is again “Maschil of Asaph”; at seventy-two verses this is the longest psalm after 119. “Law” is torah, which means teaching or instruction before it means a legal code, and the opening echoes Moses’ song: “Give ear, O ye heavens... My doctrine shall drop as the rain” (Deuteronomy 32:1–2).

“Dark sayings” is chidot, riddles, the word for Samson’s riddle at his wedding feast (Judges 14:12) and for the “hard questions” the queen of Sheba brought to Solomon (1 Kings 10:1). History is offered as a puzzle whose answer has to be worked out. Psalm 49:4 pairs the same two words.

Hearing, knowing and being told is the chain of oral tradition, from fathers’ mouths to children’s ears. Gideon appeals to it when he asks, “where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of?” (Judges 6:13), and 44:1 opens, “our fathers have told us”.

“We will not hide them” uses a verb for concealing, as though silence would be a kind of theft from the next generation. The law built questions into the calendar for this purpose: “when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service?” at Passover (Exodus 12:26–27).

“Testimony” is edut, the word used for the tablets of the covenant laid in the ark (Exodus 25:16), a witness in stone. The command to pass it on is Deuteronomy 6:7, “thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house”.

Count the generations in verses 5 and 6: the fathers, their children, children not yet born, and those children’s children, four links of a chain. “Arise” means grow up and take their place, as the generation of Judges 2:10 “arose” after Joshua and “knew not the LORD”.

“Hope” here is kesel, confidence, a word that also means the loins or flank, where a man’s strength sits, so it names where one puts one’s weight. The three aims run in order: trust in God, memory of his works, obedience to his commandments.

“Stubborn and rebellious” is sorer umoreh, the exact pair used for the son whose parents bring him to the elders in Deuteronomy 21:18–21; here a whole ancestral generation is that son. “Set not their heart aright” is literally “did not make firm their heart”, kun, the verb for laying a foundation.

“Being armed, and carrying bows” is literally “armed men, shooters of the bow”, trained archers. Ephraim was the leading northern tribe, Joshua’s own (Numbers 13:8), and it held Shiloh, where the tabernacle stood; the psalm returns to that in verses 60 and 67.

“Walk” is the Hebrew picture of conduct as a road travelled, the root of the later rabbinic word halakhah for the way of the law. To “refuse” is ma’en, a flat unwillingness, the word for Pharaoh’s refusal to let Israel go (Exodus 7:14).

Deuteronomy 8:11 warns against exactly this, “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God”, and says when it would happen: when houses were built and herds multiplied. “Shewed them” is ra’ah in the causative, made them see: the forgotten things were things they had witnessed.

Zoan is Tanis, in the north-eastern Nile delta, later a royal city of Egypt, and “the field of Zoan” is the country around it. Numbers 13:22 dates Hebron by it, “built seven years before Zoan in Egypt”. Only this psalm places the wonders of the exodus there by name.

“As an heap” is ned, a wall or mound of water, the word of Exodus 15:8, “the floods stood upright as an heap”, and of the Jordan in Joshua 3:16. “Divided” is baqa’, to split, the verb of Exodus 14:16, “stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it”.

Exodus 13:21 gives the arrangement: a pillar of cloud by day to lead the way, and a pillar of fire by night “to give them light”, so that they could march at any hour. The psalm compresses it into two phrases, one for each half of the day.

“Rocks” is plural, and the law records two such events: at Rephidim, where Moses struck the rock at God’s word (Exodus 17:6), and at Kadesh, where he struck it twice in anger (Numbers 20:11). “As out of the great depths” gives the water the scale of the deep beneath the earth.

“Streams” is nozelim, running water, the word the Song of the Sea uses for the “floods” that stood still (Exodus 15:8): the God who stopped flowing water in the sea starts it flowing in the desert. The rock here is sela, a crag, the word of Numbers 20:8.

“Yet more” is literally “they added still to sin”, and the verb yasaf returns through the psalm’s account of repeated failure. “Provoking” is marah, to defy, the verb Deuteronomy 9:7 uses of the whole wilderness period, “ye have been rebellious against the LORD”. “Wilderness” here is tsiyyah, the dry land where the water had just been given.

“Tempted” is nissah, to test or put on trial, the root of Massah, the place named for Israel’s testing of the LORD (Exodus 17:7). “Meat” is ochel, food of any kind, and “for their lust” is “for their soul”, nephesh, here meaning appetite, the throat that craves.

“Furnish a table” is arakh shulchan, the very words of 23:5, “Thou preparest a table before me”; what one psalm confesses, this generation doubted. The complaint is recorded in prose in Numbers 11:4, “Who shall give us flesh to eat?”

“Gushed out” is zuv, the verb of “a land flowing with milk and honey”: they describe the miracle in the language of the promise and still doubt. Bread and flesh answer the two food demands of the wilderness, manna in Exodus 16 and quails in Numbers 11.

The fire recalls Taberah, “burning”, where “the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp” (Numbers 11:1–3), just before the complaint about flesh. “Came up” is the verb for smoke rising, anger going up like the smoke of 74:1.

“Believed” is he’emin, to lean one’s weight on something firm, the word used of Abraham, “he believed in the LORD” (Genesis 15:6), and of Israel after the sea, which “believed the LORD, and his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31). That belief had not lasted to the next hunger.

“The doors of heaven” is a picture found only here. Genesis 7:11 opens “the windows of heaven” for the flood, and in 2 Kings 7:2 an officer scoffs at the idea that God could “make windows in heaven” to end a famine. The storehouse of the sky is imagined with gates.

“Corn of heaven” is grain from the sky; Exodus 16:31 says the manna was “like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey”. The crowd in John 6:31 quotes this line to Jesus: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

“Angels’ food” is literally “bread of the mighty ones”, abbirim, the word used of the “stouthearted” in 76:5; the Greek translators took the mighty ones to be angels. “Meat” here is tsedah, provisions for a journey, the word for the food Joseph put in his brothers’ sacks “for the way” (Genesis 42:25).

Numbers 11:31 says only that “there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea”. The psalm names two winds, east and south, which fits the spring migration of quail flying north from Africa across Sinai, when exhausted flocks come down low to the ground.

The verb is the same one used of the manna in verse 24, “rained”: meat falls like weather. “As dust” and “as the sand of the sea” are the counting images of the promise to Abraham (Genesis 13:16; 22:17), here spent on birds.

Numbers 11:31–32 gives the scale: quail lay a day’s journey on every side of the camp, about two cubits deep, and the one who gathered least took ten homers, a homer being as much as a donkey could carry.

“Desire” is ta’avah, craving, the word that named the place afterwards: Kibroth-hattaavah, “the graves of craving”, where they buried the people who had lusted (Numbers 11:34). “Well filled” is the Hebrew for sated, eaten past need.

“While their meat was yet in their mouths” matches Numbers 11:33, “while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed”. “Estranged” is zur, to turn aside or become a stranger: full as they were, they had not turned away from the craving itself.

“The fattest of them” is mishmannim, the sturdiest, men in the best condition, and “chosen men” is bachurim, young men in their prime, the age of soldiers. The judgment falls where strength is greatest, on those who might have been expected to survive anything.

The line answers God’s own question in Numbers 14:11, spoken after the spies’ report: “how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?” “Believed not for” means did not believe on the strength of what they had seen.

“Vanity” is hevel, breath or vapour, the word of Ecclesiastes and the name of Abel: their days went up like breath. The forty years of Numbers 14:33–35, in which the generation that left Egypt died in the wilderness, are the likeliest background. “Trouble” is behalah, sudden terror.

“Enquired early” is shicharu, the dawn-seeking verb of 63:1, but here it is prompted by corpses rather than longing. Hosea 5:15 records the same pattern in God’s own voice: “in their affliction they will seek me early.”

Both titles come from Moses’ song: God is “the Rock, his work is perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4), and Israel “lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” (32:15). “The high God their redeemer” is El Elyon go’alam, God Most High, their kinsman who buys back.

“Flatter” is pittuhu, from patah, to entice or deceive, the verb used for seducing a young woman in Exodus 22:16 and for the Philistine lords telling Delilah to “entice” Samson (Judges 16:5). They were trying to talk God round. “Lied” is kazav, the word for a stream that fails in summer.

“Right” is nakhon, firm, the same verb as “set not their heart aright” in verse 8. “Stedfast” is ne’emnu, from the root of amen and of “believed” in verse 22: a people who would not lean on God could not be leaned on either.

“Forgave” is kipper, the atonement verb of 65:3, and “full of compassion” is rachum, the first word of God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6. Jewish evening prayer opens with this verse on weekdays, “And he, being compassionate, atones iniquity”.

Genesis 6:3 gives the same reason from God’s side, “for that he also is flesh”, and Job 7:7 says “my life is wind”. “Wind” is ruach, which also means spirit and breath: the life in them is a breath that goes out and does not come back.

“How oft” is kammah, how many times, and Numbers 14:22 gives God’s own count: they “have tempted me now these ten times”. “Grieve” is atsav, to cause pain, the verb used when God “was grieved at his heart” before the flood (Genesis 6:6).

“Limited” is hitvu, a rare verb that may mean to mark out or set a boundary, from tav, the last letter of the alphabet and a mark; others take it as “pained”. The King James reading pictures Israel drawing a line and deciding God could go no further. “Holy One of Israel” is the title of 71:22.

“His hand” is the power of the exodus, the “mighty hand” of Deuteronomy 26:8. “Delivered” is padah, to ransom, the verb Deuteronomy 7:8 uses of the exodus itself: God “redeemed you out of the house of bondmen”. They forgot the day as well as the deed.

“Signs” and “wonders” are otot and moftim, the fixed pair Deuteronomy 6:22 uses for the plagues, “signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt”. The field of Zoan is named again from verse 12, framing this second telling of Egypt with the same place.

The first plague, Exodus 7:20: “all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.” “Floods” is nozelim, the same word as the “streams” God brought from the rock for Israel in verse 16: running water given to one people is taken from another.

“Divers sorts of flies” is arov, a swarm, the fourth plague (Exodus 8:21), and the frogs were the second (Exodus 8:6). The psalm names fewer plagues than Exodus, in its own order, and gives its flies the verb “devoured”, as though they bit.

“Caterpiller” is chasil, one of the four names for locust swarms in Joel 1:4, perhaps the young, crawling stage, and “locust” is arbeh, the eighth plague (Exodus 10:12–15). “Increase” and “labour” are the crop and the work that grew it: the locusts eat a year’s toil.

The sycomore was the sycomore fig, a staple tree of Egypt, whose timber made coffins and whose fruit fed the poor; Amos was a “gatherer of sycomore fruit” (Amos 7:14). “Frost” renders chanamal, found only here, perhaps sleet or hailstones. Exodus 9:25 says the hail “brake every tree of the field”.

“Hot thunderbolts” is reshafim, the same word as the fiery “arrows” of 76:3, lightning striking the flocks. Exodus 9:23–24 describes “hail, and fire mingled with the hail”, and 9:19 had warned the Egyptians to bring their cattle in from the field.

Four words for anger are stacked: charon appo, evrah, za’am and tsarah, burning, overflowing fury, foaming indignation, and distress. “Sending” is mishlachat, a deputation or detachment, as though the plagues came as a company of envoys sent out with orders.

“Made a way” is literally “levelled a path”, as road-builders clear a route: nothing stood in the anger’s way. “Pestilence” is dever, the word rendered “murrain” for the plague on Egypt’s livestock in Exodus 9:3; here it takes their lives.

“The chief of their strength” is reshit onim, the first-fruits of their vigour, the phrase Jacob used of his firstborn Reuben, “the beginning of my strength” (Genesis 49:3). “Ham” names Egypt by its ancestor, since Mizraim, Egypt, is a son of Ham in Genesis 10:6.

“Made to go forth” is nasa, to pull up tent pegs and set out, the verb of Israel’s stages in Numbers 33. The image has an edge, since Genesis 46:34 says “every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians”: God leads Israel out as a shepherd from the land that despised shepherds.

“Safely” is lavetach, in security, the word for a land that dwells without fear. “Overwhelmed” is kissah, covered, the verb of Exodus 15:10, “the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters”. The sea that stood as a heap for one army lay down on the other.

“Border of his sanctuary” can be read as “his holy territory”, the land as a whole, and “this mountain” as Zion or the hill country of Canaan. Exodus 15:17 is the source: “plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance”. “Purchased” is qanah, the verb of 74:2.

“By line” is chevel, a measuring cord, a word that also means an allotted portion; Joshua 18:8–10 describes men sent to walk the land and write it down, and lots cast at Shiloh to share it among the tribes. “Their tents” may be the tents of the nations driven out, now lived in by Israel.

The two verbs of verses 17 and 18 return, tested and defied, with the same title, God Most High: the settled generation repeats the wilderness one. “Testimonies” is edot, the plural of the “testimony” established in Jacob in verse 5, the teaching that was supposed to pass down.

Hosea 7:16 uses the same phrase of Ephraim, “they are like a deceitful bow”, a bow that warps when drawn and throws the arrow wide or snaps in the hand. “Dealt unfaithfully” is bagad, the betrayal-word of 73:15.

“High places” are bamot, hilltop shrines, and “graven images” are pesilim, carved idols. Moses’ song foretold both provocations with the same verbs: “They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods... they have provoked me to anger with their vanities” (Deuteronomy 32:16, 21).

“Abhorred” is ma’as, to reject, the verb Samuel uses to Saul: “Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king” (1 Samuel 15:23). “Israel” here is the whole people, not yet the northern kingdom.

Jeremiah 7:12 points his hearers to the same ruin: “go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh... and see what I did to it”. “Placed” is shikken, from shakan, to dwell, the root of the later word Shekinah for God’s dwelling presence. Excavations at Shiloh found a burned layer from the eleventh century BC, which many connect with this loss.

When the news of the ark reached Shiloh, Phinehas’s widow named her son Ichabod, “no glory”, saying “The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken” (1 Samuel 4:21–22). “Into captivity” is lashevi, the word for prisoners of war: the ark was carried off like a captive.

1 Samuel 4:10 puts the dead at thirty thousand footmen of Israel, after four thousand in the first engagement (4:2). “Was wroth” is hitabber, anger that overflows its banks, directed at nachalah, his own inheritance.

“Were not given to marriage” is literally “were not praised”, hullalu: no wedding songs were sung for them, because the young men who would have married them were dead. Jeremiah 7:34 names the same silence, “the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride” ceasing.

The priests are Hophni and Phinehas, Eli’s sons, both killed at Aphek beside the ark (1 Samuel 4:11). Phinehas’s widow fits the second half: she went into labour at the news and died giving birth, with no time to mourn her husband (1 Samuel 4:19–20).

“That shouteth by reason of wine” is mitronen, shouting or, by another derivation, rousing from wine: a warrior woken and roaring. Isaiah 42:13 draws the same figure: “The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar.”

“In the hinder parts” can mean from behind, striking an army as it runs, but it also recalls the Philistines who kept the ark and were struck “with emerods”, tumours, in Ashdod, Gath and Ekron (1 Samuel 5:6–12). “Perpetual reproach” is cherpat olam, a disgrace that does not fade.

“Refused” is ma’as, the rejection of verse 59. The tabernacle had stood at Shiloh, in the territory of Ephraim, since Joshua set it up there (Joshua 18:1); passing over Joseph’s tent meant moving the centre of worship out of the north for good.

Jacob’s blessing had already given Judah the sceptre: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah” (Genesis 49:10). “Which he loved” is ahev, the ordinary verb of love, used of Zion again in 87:2, “The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob”.

“High palaces” is ramim, the heights, which many take as the heavens: the sanctuary built on the pattern of the sky above and as steady as the earth beneath. The comparison with the earth’s foundation answers the fall of Shiloh, a sanctuary that had not been established for ever.

Nathan gives God’s words to David almost exactly: “I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people” (2 Samuel 7:8). “Chose” is bachar, the verb of verses 67 and 68, so the choosing runs from tribe to mountain to man.

“Ewes great with young” is alot, nursing ewes, which must be walked slowly; Isaiah 40:11 pictures God himself doing this work, “and shall gently lead those that are with young”. “Feed” is ra’ah, to shepherd, the royal verb of 2 Samuel 5:2, “Thou shalt feed my people Israel”.

“Integrity” is tom, wholeness, from the root of tam, the “perfect” of Job 1:1 and 64:4. “Skilfulness” is tevunot, understandings, the word for the craftsman’s skill given to Bezaleel for the tabernacle (Exodus 31:3). The psalm ends on David, and Psalm 79 opens on the ruin of what he founded.