The remainder of the psalm holds fast by that thought of the great deeds of God in the past. It is a signal example of how the same facts remembered may depress or gladden, according to the point of view from which they are regarded. We can elect whether memory shall nourish despondency or gladness. Yet the alternative is not altogether a matter of choice; for the only people to whom "remembering happier things" need not be "a sorrow's crown of sorrow" are those who see God in the past, and so are sure that every joy that was and is not shall yet again be, in more thrilling and lasting form. If He shines out on us from the east that we have left behind, His brightness will paint the western sky towards which we travel. Beneath confidence in the perpetuity of past blessings lies confidence in the eternity of God. The "years of the right hand of the Most High" answer all questions as to His change of purpose or of disposition, and supply the only firm foundation for calm assurance of the future. Memory supplies the colours with which Hope paints her truest pictures. "That which hath been is that which shall be" may be the utterance of the blasé man of the world, or of the devout man who trusts in the living God, and therefore knows that
"There shall never be one lost good!
What was shall live as before."
The strophe in vv. 13-15 fixes on the one great redeeming act of the Exodus as the pledge of future deeds of a like kind, as need requires. The language is deeply tinged with reminiscences of Exod. xv. "In holiness" (not "in the sanctuary"), the question "Who is so great a God?" the epithet "Who doest wonders," all come from Exod. xv. 11. "[Thine] arm" in the psalm recalls "By the greatness of Thine arm" in Exodus (ver. 16), and the psalmist's "redeemed Thy people" reproduces "the people which Thou hast redeemed" (Exod. xv. 13). The separate mention of "sons of Joseph" can scarcely be accounted for, if the psalm is prior to the division of the kingdoms. But the purpose of the designation is doubtful. It may express the psalmist's protest against the division as a breach of ancient national unity or his longings for reunion.
The final strophe differs from the others in structure. It contains five verses instead of three, and the verses are (with the exception of the last) composed of three clauses each instead of two. Some commentators have supposed that vv. 16-19 are an addition to the original psalm, and think that they do not cohere well with the preceding. This view denies that there is any allusion in the closing verses to the passage of the Red Sea, and takes the whole as simply a description of a theophany, like that in Psalm xviii. But surely the writhing of the waters as if in pangs at the sight of God is such an allusion. Ver. 19, too, is best understood as referring to the path through the sea, whose waters returned and covered God's footprints from human eyes. Unless there is such a reference in vv. 16-19, the connection with the preceding and with ver. 20 is no doubt loose. But that is not so much a reason for denying the right of these verses to a place in the psalm as for recognising the reference. Why should a mere description of a theophany, which had nothing to do with the psalmist's theme, have been tacked on to it? No doubt, the thunders, lightnings, and storm so grandly described here are unmentioned in Exodus; and, quite possibly, may be simply poetic heightening of the scene, intended to suggest how majestic was the intervention which freed Israel. Some commentators, indeed, have claimed the picture as giving additional facts concerning the passage of the Red Sea. Dean Stanley, for example, has worked these points into his vivid description; but that carries literalism too far.
The picture in the psalm is most striking. The continuous short clauses crash and flash like the thunders and lightnings. That energetic metaphor of the waters writhing as if panic-struck is more violent than Western taste approves, but its emotional vigour as a rendering of the fact is unmistakable. "Thine arrows went to and fro" is a very imperfect transcript of the Hebrew, which suggests the swift zigzag of the fierce flashes. In ver. 18 the last word offers some difficulty. It literally means a wheel, and is apparently best rendered as above, the thunder being poetically conceived of as the sound of the rolling wheels of God's chariot. There are several coincidences between vv. 16-19 of the psalm and Hab. iii. 10-15: namely, the expression "writhed in pain," applied in Habakkuk to the mountains; the word rendered "overflowing" (A.V.) or "tempest" (R.V.) in Hab. v. 10, cognate with the verb in ver. 17 of the psalm, and there rendered "poured out"; the designation of lightnings as God's arrows. Delitzsch strongly maintains the priority of the psalm; Hupfeld as strongly that of the prophet.
The last verse returns to the two-claused structure of the earlier part. It comes in lovely contrast with the majestic and terrible picture preceding, like the wonderful setting forth of the purpose of the other theophany in Psalm xviii., which was for no higher end than to draw one poor man from the mighty waters. All this pomp of Divine appearance, with lightnings, thunders, a heaving earth, a shrinking sea, had for its end the leading the people of God to their land, as a shepherd does his flock. The image is again an echo of Exod. xv. 13. The thing intended is not merely the passage of the Red Sea, but the whole process of guidance begun there amid the darkness. Such a close is too abrupt to please some commentators. But what more was needful or possible to be said, in a retrospect of God's past acts, for the solace of a dark present? It was more than enough to scatter fears and flash radiance into the gloom which had wrapped the psalmist. He need search no further. He has found what he sought; and so he hushes his song, and gazes in silence on the all-sufficient answer which memory has brought to all his questions and doubts. Nothing could more completely express the living, ever-present worth of the ancient deeds of God than the "abruptness" with which this psalm ceases rather than ends.
[PSALM LXXVIII.]
1 Give ear, my people, to my law,
Bow your ear to the sayings of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable,
I will utter riddles from the ancient days,
3 What we have heard and known
And our fathers have told us,
4 We will not hide from their sons,
Recounting to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah,
And His might and the wonders that He has done.
5 For He established a testimony in Jacob,
And appointed a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
To make known to their children;
6 In order that the generation to come might know,
The children who should be born,
[Who] should rise up and tell to their children,
7 That they might place their confidence in God,
And not forget the deeds of God,
But keep His commandments;
8 And not be as their fathers,
A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not make its heart steadfast,
And whose spirit was not faithful towards God.
9 The children of Ephraim, bearing [and] drawing bows,
Turned back in the day of onset.
10 They kept not the covenant of God,
And in His law they refused to walk,
11 And they forgot His doings,
And the wonders which He had showed them.
12 Before their fathers He did marvels,
In the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 He cleft the sea and let them pass through,
And He reared up the waters like a heap of corn,
14 And He guided them in a cloud by day
And all night in a fiery light.
15 He cleft rocks in the wilderness,
And gave them drink abundantly, as [from] ocean depths.
16 And He brought forth streams from the cliff,
And made waters to flow down like rivers.
17 But they went on to sin yet more against Him,
To rebel against the Most High in the desert.
18 And they tempted God in their heart,
In asking meat after their desire.
19 And they spoke against God, they said,
"Is God able to spread a table in the wilderness?
20 Behold, He struck a rock, and waters gushed forth,
And torrents flowed out.
Is He able to give bread also?
Or will He prepare flesh for His people?"
21 Jehovah heard and was wroth,
And a fire was kindled in Jacob,
And wrath also went up against Israel.
22 For they did not believe in God,
And trusted not in His salvation.
23 And He commanded the clouds above,
And opened the doors of heaven,
24 And rained upon them manna to eat,
And gave them the corn of heaven.
25 Men did eat the bread of the Mighty Ones;
He sent them sustenance to the full.
26 He made the east wind go forth in the heavens,
And guided the south wind by His power;
27 And He rained flesh upon them like dust,
And winged fowls like the sand of the seas,
28 And let it fall in the midst of their camp,
Round about their habitations.
29 So they ate and were surfeited,
And their desires He brought to them.
30 They were not estranged from their desires
Their food was yet in their mouths.
31 And the wrath of God rose against them,
And slew the fattest of them,
And struck down the young men of Israel.
32 For all this they sinned yet more,
And believed not in His wonders.
33 So He made their days to vanish like a breath,
And their years in suddenness.
34 When He slew them, then they inquired after Him,
And returned and sought God earnestly.
35 And they remembered that God was their rock,
And God Most High their redeemer.
36 And they flattered Him with their mouth,
And with their tongue they lied to Him,
37 And their heart was not steadfast with Him,
And they were not faithful to His covenant.
38 But He is compassionate, covers iniquity, and destroys not;
Yea, many a time He takes back His anger,
And rouses not all His wrath.
39 So He remembered that they were [but] flesh,
A wind that goes and comes not again.
40 How often did they provoke Him in the wilderness,
Did they grieve Him in the desert!
41 Yea, again and again they tempted God,
And the Holy One of Israel they vexed.
42 They remembered not His hand,
The day when He set them free from the adversary,
43 When He set forth His signs in Egypt,
And His wonders in the field of Zoan.
44 And He turned to blood their Nile streams,
And their streams they could not drink.
45 He sent amongst them flies that devoured them,
And frogs that destroyed them.
46 And He gave their increase to the caterpillar,
And their toil to the locust.
47 He killed their vines with hail,
And their sycamores with frost. [?]
48 And He gave their cattle up to the hail,
And their flocks to the lightnings.
49 He sent against them the heat of His anger,
Wrath and indignation and trouble,
A mission of angels of evil.
50 He levelled a path for His anger,
He spared not their souls from death,
But delivered over their life to the pestilence.
51 And He smote all the first-born of Egypt,
The firstlings of [their] strength in the tents of Ham.
52 And He made His people go forth like sheep,
And guided them like a flock in the desert.
53 And He led them safely, that they did not fear,
And the sea covered their enemies.
54 And He brought them to His holy border,
This mountain, which His right hand had won.
55 And He drove out the nations before them,
And allotted them by line as an inheritance,
And made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
56 But they tempted and provoked God Most High,
And His testimonies they did not keep.
57 And they turned back and were faithless like their fathers,
They were turned aside like a deceitful bow;
58 And they provoked Him to anger with their high places,
And with their graven images they moved Him to jealousy.
59 God heard and was wroth,
And loathed Israel exceedingly.
60 So that He rejected the habitation of Shiloh,
The tent [which] He had pitched among men.
61 And He gave His strength to captivity,
And His beauty into the hand of the adversary.
62 And He delivered His people to the sword,
And against His inheritance He was wroth.
63 Their young men the fire devoured,
And their maidens were not praised in the marriage-song.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
And their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awoke as one that had slept,
Like a warrior shouting because of wine.
66 And He beat His adversaries back,
He put on them a perpetual reproach.
67 And He loathed the tent of Joseph,
And the tribe of Ephraim He did not choose.
68 But He chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which He loved.
69 And He built His sanctuary like [heavenly] heights,
Like the earth which He has founded for ever.
70 And He chose David His servant,
And took him from the sheepfolds;
71 From following the ewes that give suck, He brought him
To feed Jacob His people,
And Israel His inheritance.
72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart,
And with the skilfulness of his hands he guided them.