Psalm 78:1-29

Contemporary English Version

(A special psalm by Asaph.)

What God Has Done for His People

¹My friends, I beg you
    to listen as I teach.
²^(A) I will give instruction
and explain the mystery
    of what happened long ago.
³These are things we learned
    from our ancestors,
⁴and we will tell them
    to the next generation.
We won't keep secret
    the glorious deeds
and the mighty miracles
    of the Lord.

⁵God gave his Law
to Jacob's descendants,
    the people of Israel.
And he told our ancestors
    to teach their children,
⁶so that each new generation
would know his Law
    and tell it to the next.
⁷Then they would trust God
    and obey his teachings,
without forgetting anything
    God had done.
⁸They would be different
    from their ancestors,
who were stubborn, rebellious,
    and unfaithful to God.

⁹The warriors from Ephraim
    were armed with arrows,
but they ran away
    when the battle began.
¹⁰They broke their agreement
    with God,
and they turned their backs
    on his teaching.
¹¹They forgot all he had done,
    even the mighty miracles
¹²^(B)^(C) he did for their ancestors
    near Zoan^[a] in Egypt.

¹³^(D) God made a path in the sea
and piled up the water
    as he led them across.
¹⁴^(E) He guided them during the day
    with a cloud,
and each night he led them
    with a flaming fire.
¹⁵^(F) God made water flow
from rocks he split open
    in the desert,
and his people drank freely,
    as though from a lake.
¹⁶He made streams gush out
    like rivers from rocks.

¹⁷But in the desert,
the people of God Most High
    kept sinning and rebelling.
¹⁸^(G) They stubbornly tested God
and demanded from him
    what they wanted to eat.
¹⁹They challenged God by saying,
“Can God provide food
    out here in the desert?
²⁰It's true God struck the rock
and water gushed out
    like a river,
but can he give his people
    bread and meat?”

²¹When the Lord heard this,
    he was angry and furious
with Jacob's descendants,
    the people of Israel.
²²They had refused to trust him,
and they had doubted
    his saving power.

²³But God gave a command
    to the clouds,
and he opened the doors
    in the skies.
²⁴^(H) From heaven he sent grain
    that they called manna.^[b]
²⁵He gave them more than enough,
and each one of them ate
    this special food.

²⁶God's mighty power
sent a strong wind
    from the southeast,
²⁷and it brought birds
that covered the ground,
    like sand on the beach.
²⁸Then God made the birds fall
in the camp of his people
    near their tents.

²⁹God gave his people
all they wanted,
and each of them ate
until they were full.

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Footnotes

78.12 Zoan: A city in the eastern part of the Nile Delta.
78.24 manna: When the people of Israel were wandering through the desert, the Lord gave them a special kind of food to eat. It tasted like a wafer and was called “manna,” which in Hebrew means, “What is this?”