32
Despite all this, they kept sinning
and did not believe His wonderful works.
33
He made their days end in futility,
their years in sudden disaster.
34
When He killed some of them,
the rest began to seek Him;
they repented and searched for God.
35
They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God, their Redeemer.
36
But they deceived Him with their mouths,
they lied to Him with their tongues,
37
their hearts were insincere toward Him,
and they were unfaithful to His covenant.
38
Yet He was compassionate;
He
•atoned
for their
•guilt
and did not destroy them.
He often turned His anger aside
and did not unleash all His wrath.
39
He remembered that they were only flesh,
a wind that passes and does not return.
40
How often they rebelled against Him
in the wilderness
and grieved Him in the desert.
41
They constantly tested God
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42
They did not remember His power shown
on the day He redeemed them from the foe,
43
when He performed His miraculous signs in Egypt
and His wonders in the region of Zoan.
44
He turned their rivers into blood,
and they could not drink from their streams.
45
He sent among them swarms of flies,
which fed on them,
and frogs, which devastated them.
46
He gave their crops to the caterpillar
and the fruit of their labor to the locust.
47
He killed their vines with hail
and their sycamore fig trees with a flood.
48
He handed over their livestock to hail
and their cattle to lightning bolts.
49
He sent His burning anger against them:
fury, indignation, and calamity —
a band of deadly messengers.
50
He cleared a path for His anger.
He did not spare them from death
but delivered their lives to the plague.
51
He struck all the firstborn in Egypt,
the first progeny of the tents of Ham.
52
He led His people out like sheep
and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
53
He led them safely, and they were not afraid;
but the sea covered their enemies.
54
He brought them to His holy land,
to the mountain His right hand acquired.
55
He drove out nations before them.
He apportioned their inheritance by lot
and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
56
But they rebelliously tested the Most High God,
for they did not keep His decrees.
57
They treacherously turned away like their fathers;
they became warped like a faulty bow.
58
They enraged Him with their
•high
places
and provoked His jealousy with their carved images.
59
God heard and became furious;
He completely rejected Israel.
60
He abandoned the tabernacle at Shiloh,
the tent where He resided among men.
61
He gave up His strength to captivity
and His splendor to the hand of a foe.
62
He surrendered His people to the sword
because He was enraged with His heritage.
63
Fire consumed His chosen young men,
and His young women had no wedding songs.
64
His priests fell by the sword,
but the widows could not lament.
65
Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep,
like a warrior from the effects of wine.
66
He beat back His foes;
He gave them lasting shame.
67
He rejected the tent of Joseph
and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68
He chose instead the tribe of Judah,
Mount
•Zion
, which He loved.
69
He built His sanctuary like the heights,
like the earth that He established forever.
70
He chose David His servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
71
He brought him from tending ewes
to be shepherd over His people Jacob —
over Israel, His inheritance.
72
He shepherded them with a pure heart
and guided them with his skillful hands.
Psalms
Faith amid Confusion
79
God, the nations have invaded Your inheritance,
desecrated Your holy temple,
and turned Jerusalem into ruins.
2
They gave the corpses of Your servants
to the birds of the sky for food,
the flesh of Your godly ones
to the beasts of the earth.
3
They poured out their blood
like water all around Jerusalem,
and there was no one to bury them.
4
We have become an object of reproach
to our neighbors,
a source of mockery and ridicule
to those around us.
5
How long,
•Yahweh
? Will You be angry forever?
Will Your jealousy keep burning like fire?
6
Pour out Your wrath on the nations
that don't acknowledge You,
on the kingdoms that don't call on Your name,
7
for they have devoured Jacob
and devastated his homeland.
8
Do not hold past sins against us;
let Your compassion come to us quickly,
for we have become weak.
9
God of our salvation, help us —
for the glory of Your name.
Deliver us and
•atone
for our sins,
because of Your name.
10
Why should the nations ask,
“Where is their God? ”
Before our eyes,
let vengeance for the shed blood of Your servants
be known among the nations.
11
Let the groans of the prisoners reach You;
according to Your great power,
preserve those condemned to die.
12
Pay back sevenfold to our neighbors
the reproach they have hurled at You, Lord.
13
Then we, Your people, the sheep of Your pasture,
will thank You forever;
we will declare Your praise
to generation after generation.
Psalms
A Prayer for Restoration
For the choir director: according to “The Lilies.” A testimony of
•Asaph
. A psalm.
80
Listen, Shepherd of Israel,
who leads Joseph like a flock;
You who sit enthroned on the
•cherubim
,
rise up
2
before Ephraim,
Benjamin, and Manasseh.
Rally Your power and come to save us.
3
Restore us, God;
look on us with favor,
and we will be saved.
4
Lord
God of
•Hosts
,
how long will You be angry
with Your people's prayers?
5
You fed them the bread of tears
and gave them a full measure
of tears to drink.
6
You make us quarrel with our neighbors;
our enemies make fun of us.
7
Restore us, God of Hosts;
look on us with favor, and we will be saved.
8
You uprooted a vine from Egypt;
You drove out the nations and planted it.
9
You cleared a place for it;
it took root and filled the land.
10
The mountains were covered by its shade,
and the mighty cedars with its branches.
11
It sent out sprouts toward the Sea
and shoots toward the River.
12
Why have You broken down its walls
so that all who pass by pick its fruit?
13
The boar from the forest tears it
and creatures of the field feed on it.
14
Return, God of Hosts.
Look down from heaven and see;
take care of this vine,
15
the root Your right hand has planted,
the shoot that You made strong for Yourself.
16
It was cut down and burned up;
they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.
17
Let Your hand be with the man at Your right hand,
with the son of man
You have made strong for Yourself.
18
Then we will not turn away from You;
revive us, and we will call on Your name.
19
Restore us,
•Yahweh
, the God of Hosts;
look on us with favor, and we will be saved.
Psalms
A Call to Obedience
81
Sing for joy to God our strength;
shout in triumph to the God of Jacob.
2
Lift up a song — play the tambourine,
the melodious lyre, and the harp.
3
Blow the horn on the day of our feasts
during the new moon
and during the full moon.
4
For this is a statute for Israel,
a judgment of the God of Jacob.
5
He set it up as an ordinance for Joseph
when He went throughout the land of Egypt.
I heard an unfamiliar language:
6
“I relieved his shoulder from the burden;
his hands were freed from carrying the basket.
7
You called out in distress, and I rescued you;
I answered you from the thundercloud.
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
8
Listen, My people, and I will admonish you.
Israel, if you would only listen to Me!
9
There must not be a strange god among you;
you must not bow down to a foreign god.
10
I am
•Yahweh
your God,
who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11
“But My people did not listen to Me;
Israel did not obey Me.
12
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
to follow their own plans.
13
If only My people would listen to Me
and Israel would follow My ways,
14
I would quickly subdue their enemies
and turn My hand against their foes.”
15
Those who hate the
Lord
would pretend submission to Him;
their doom would last forever.
16
But He would feed Israel with the best wheat.
“I would satisfy you with honey from the rock.”
Psalms
A Plea for Righteous Judgment
82
God has taken His place in the divine assembly;
He judges among the gods:
2
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
3
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless;
uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
4
Rescue the poor and needy;
save them from the power of the wicked.”
5
They do not know or understand;
they wander in darkness.
All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6
I said, “You are gods;
you are all sons of the
•Most
High.
7
However, you will die like men
and fall like any other ruler.”