Psalm 78:40-72

40 How often the people disobeyed him in the wilderness*
and offended him in the desert!

41 Again and again they tempted God*
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

42 They did not remember his power*
in the day when he ransomed them from the enemy;

43 How he wrought his signs in Egypt*
and his omens in the field of Zoan.

44 He turned their rivers into blood,*
so that they could not drink of their streams.

45 He sent swarms of flies among them, which ate them up,*
and frogs, which destroyed them.

46 He gave their crops to the caterpillar,*
the fruit of their toil to the locust.

47 He killed their vines with hail*
and their sycamores with frost.

48 He delivered their cattle to hailstones*
and their livestock to hot thunderbolts.

49 He poured out upon them his blazing anger:*
fury, indignation, and distress,
a troop of destroying angels.

50 He gave full rein to his anger;
he did not spare their souls from death;*
but delivered their lives to the plague.

51 He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt,*
the flower of manhood in the dwellings of Ham.

52 He led out his people like sheep*
and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

53 He led them to safety, and they were not afraid;*
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

54 He brought them to his holy land,*
the mountain his right hand had won.

55 He drove out the Canaanites before them
and apportioned an inheritance to them by lot;*
he made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

56 But they tested the Most High God, and defied him,*
and did not keep his commandments.

57 They turned away and were disloyal like their fathers;*
they were undependable like a warped bow.

58 They grieved him with their hill-altars*
they provoked his displeasure with their idols.

59 When God heard this, he was angry*
and utterly rejected Israel.

60 He forsook the shrine at Shiloh,*
the tabernacle where he had lived among his people.

61 He delivered the ark into captivity,*
his glory into the adversary’s hand.

62 He gave his people to the sword*
and was angered against his inheritance.

63 The fire consumed their young men;*
there were no wedding songs for their maidens.

64 Their priests fell by the sword,*
and their widows made no lamentation.

65 Then the LORD woke as though from sleep,*
like a warrior refreshed with wine.

66 He struck his enemies on the backside*
and put them to perpetual shame.

67 He rejected the tent of Joseph*
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;

68 He chose instead the tribe of Judah*
and Mount Zion, which he loved.

69 He built his sanctuary like the heights of heaven,*
like the earth which he founded for ever.

70 He chose David his servant,*
and took him away from the sheepfolds.

71 He brought him from following the ewes,*
to be a shepherd over Jacob his people
and over Israel his inheritance.

72 So he shepherded them with a faithful and true heart*
and guided them with the skillfulness of his hands.