Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 (NRSV)
A Maskil of Asaph.
1 Give ear, O my people, to my
teaching;
incline
your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will
utter dark sayings from of old,
3 things that we have heard and known,
that our
ancestors have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their
children;
we will
tell to the coming generation
the
glorious deeds of the Lord, and
his might,
and the wonders that he has
done.
12 In the sight of their ancestors he
worked marvels
in the
land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and let them
pass through it,
and made
the waters stand like a heap.
14 In the daytime he led them with a
cloud,
and all
night long with a fiery light.
15 He split rocks open in the
wilderness,
and gave
them drink abundantly as from the deep.
16 He made streams come out of the
rock,
and caused waters to flow down like rivers.
Psalm
78 is a wisdom Psalm. The date is likely
from 922-721. “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays
open.”[1]
The lessons of life, faith, and history can be hard. We are difficult people
for whom the lessons of life and history may have some difficulty penetrating
us. We as Christians are part of this history of Israel. We need to learn the
lessons of its history for today.
This Psalm is one
of the longest in the Psalter. The superscription describes it as “A Maskil of
Asaph.” Several psalms from Book Three of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89) are “of
Asaph,” who was one of the chief musicians installed in the Jerusalem temple
during the political, social and religious reorganizations under King David (I
Chronicles 6:39; 15:17; 16:5-7). According to the book of Chronicles, Asaph was
responsible for playing the cymbals and leading the songs (or, more likely to
modern ears, chants) of thanksgiving in the temple liturgy. The collection of
psalms connected to Asaph are from a collection left by Asaph or his guild of
musicians, and were probably added to the canonical Psalter during the Persian
period (6th-4th centuries B.C.E.), when the Psalter acquired its definitive
form. Scholars often connect it with Deuteronomy 32, but it approaches history
differently. The intent of the poem is not to give a chronological history. The community already knows this
history. Dahood sees an attempt to draw
lessons from the history of Israel. The
psalm recounts, in a didactic and somewhat pointed way, pivotal events from the
sacred history of Israel in order to provide instruction for its contemporary
hearers. Like Psalms 105-106, 136, and others, Psalm 78 recounts the history of
Israel in order to expound upon the providential care of God for Israel, on the
one hand, and the persistent recalcitrance of Israel in responding to and
living in the light of that care, on the other. The events narrated stretch
from the time of the liberation of Israel from Egyptian bondage, the pivotal
event in the sacred story of Israel, down to the time of David (a period of
perhaps 250 years), when a new era began in the social and religious life of
Israel. Although the psalm bears clear marks of the wisdom tradition, it also
strongly appears to be part of a program of biblical literature, found in
several books, extolling the contributions of the Davidic dynasty to Israel’s
history and serving as an apologia for the reforms undertaken (and imposed) by
David. The tribe of Joseph, witness to great miracles, has rebelled against
God, so that God has now rejected them in favor of the Temple at Jerusalem, the
Davidic covenant, and Judah. The selective use of events, as well as the abrupt
transition from wilderness wandering to security in Zion, leaves the very
strong impression that one of the functions of the psalm was to justify the
revolutionary and controversial reforms of the monarchic era of David and
Solomon.
Psalm 78:1-8 are
an introduction stressing the importance of handing down the traditions of how
God is dealing with the people. In verses 1-4, the people of Israel are also
uniquely the people of the Lord. Here, the psalmist refers to Israel as “my
people,” in a fashion similar to Esther 7:3, Psalm 59:11, and Jeremiah 9:2. He
wants them to listen to his teaching, a phrase that connects the psalm with the
wisdom tradition in Israel, to the Temple, and Jerusalem. The wisdom traditions
of this part of the ancient world focused on practical teachings regarding
life, but it incorporated what one could learn from the sacred events of the
history of Israel. The mashal was a
teaching, proverb, instruction, or parable. In Numbers 23:7, 18, 24:3, 15, etc.,
it translates as “oracle.” It denotes a gnomic instruction, meaning wisdom that
is not immediately obvious. We see this meaning here in its parallel to dark or
obscure sayings or riddles from the past. The difficulty here is that the rest
of the psalm seems rather straightforward as a narrative from the sacred
history of Israel. In verse 4, the “my people” curiously becomes the desire not
to hide these teachings from “their children.” Such a rationale for the
preservation and transmission of the sacred history of Israel is as we find it
in Deuteronomy 32:45-6.
In
verses 12-16, the starting point for the wisdom one can glean from the sacred
history of Israel is the saving deeds of Moses, Reed Sea, and guidance and
preservation in the wilderness. These verses are part of the opening historical
section of the psalm. The Psalm refers to Exodus 14, 13:17-22, and Numbers
20:2-13.
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