The central theme is faithful transmission of sacred memory. The passage presents Psalm 78:1–7 as a wisdom-shaped introduction to a historical psalm whose purpose is not merely to recount Israel’s past, but to teach later generations how to live faithfully before God. Several related themes stand out:
- History as instruction: The psalm uses Israel’s past didactically. The events are remembered not for chronology alone, but to draw moral and theological lessons.
- Generational responsibility: A major emphasis is the duty to teach children and future generations the works, commandments, and faithfulness of God.
- Hope in God: Verse 7 becomes the theological center of the section: the goal of teaching is that future generations “set their hope in God.”
- Memory versus forgetfulness: Remembering God’s works is tied to obedience, while forgetting leads to rebellion and judgment.
- Wisdom and tradition: The opening language—“teaching,” “parable,” and “dark sayings”—frames the psalm as wisdom instruction, even though the body of Psalm 78 is historical narrative.
- Theological interpretation of Israel’s history: The document highlights how the psalm interprets Israel’s failures, the fall of the Northern Kingdom, and the preference for Judah, Zion, and Davidic kingship.
Overall, the theme is that Israel must remember and teach God’s deeds so that future generations may trust God, obey the covenant, and avoid the failures of the past.
Introduction
Psalm 78 begins like a wisdom Psalm, but the rest is a historical precis consisting of a reinterpretation of earlier biblical traditions. Thus, we might think of it as a didactic historical psalm, using a narrative about the past to teach about the present.
The date is after the fall of Israel in 722/1. It may date from exilic times.
This Psalm the second longest in the Psalter. “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.
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. The poet addresses the public. Dahood sees an attempt to draw lessons from the history of Israel. The psalm recounts, in a didactic and pointed way, pivotal events from the sacred history of Israel to provide instruction for its contemporary hearers. Like Psalms 105-106 and 136 and others, Psalm 78 recounts the history of Israel 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 250 years), when a new era began in the social and religious life of Israel. It offers justification for the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and praise for Davidic kingship centered in the chosen city of Zion. The diversity suggests it may have gone through a process of revision.
Although the psalm bears clear marks of the wisdom tradition, it also is 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 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. The narrative as recounted in the psalm differs from that found in the Torah, since its basis is the non-Priestly narrative traditions, especially the J source, as well as traditions that were not canonized in the Jewish tradition.
Verse-by-verse study
The superscription describes it as “A Maskil (either a “skillful” or “artful” song or, less likely, a “didactic” song. It describes several psalms (e.g., Psalms 32, 42, 45, etc.) 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 added to the canonical Psalter during the Persian period (6th-4th centuries B.C.E.), when the Psalter acquired its definitive form.[2]
Psalm 78:1-7 are part of an introduction that extends to verse 8, 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. 1 Give ear, O my people, referring to Israel. It is a theological axiom of the religion of Israel that the people of Israel were God’s people and no one else’s, and it is rare for anyone other than the divine to address Israel with the first-person singular possessive pronoun. In Esther 7:3, Esther refers to the Hebrews as “my people,” but the usage is purely ethnic, not theological. The only other instances of humans referring to Israel possessively in a theological context are Psalm 59:11 and Jeremiah 9:2. He wants them to listen to my teaching, a phrase that connects the psalm with the wisdom tradition in Israel, to the Temple, and Jerusalem. Teachers in Israel want to clarify the works of the Lord for now and for future generations. Although the precise relationship between the Temple and the wisdom schools (or even circles) in ancient Israel is not known, it is certain that there was extensive interplay between the two ways of looking at the world. The religious tradition of Israel, centered on the recitation of sacred events in Israel’s mythic (i.e., sacro-historical) past, over time incorporated practical teachings from the wisdom circles that focused on timeless and general truths. We find evidence of this interplay not only in the biblical books identified as ’Wisdom Books’ (e.g., Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes), but also in various traces of wisdom influence scattered throughout much of the Hebrew Bible. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in a parable. 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. Since we have in this psalm a parable, the view of God presented in this psalm as angry, manic, and abusive may well soften the image. Yet, an honest reading of the behavior of God in the Old Testament can lead the skeptical reader down this path. I will utter dark sayings or riddles from of old, we see this meaning of parable 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 straightforward as a narrative from the sacred history of Israel. What he will utter in this psalm are 3 things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their children, a curious switch from “my people” in verse 1; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. 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 5-7, among the glorious deeds of the Lord is that 5 He established a decree in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children; 6 that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, 7so that they should set their hope in God. The goal of their teaching is not an abstract knowledge of Torah, but a personal relationship of hope or trust in God. Many psalms have a similar theme: 9:18, 33:18, 22, 39:7, 42:5, 11, 62:5, 65:5, and 130:7. The writer raises the question of on what we place our hope. Many other objects of hope or trust will lure the people of God away. This Psalm will cover some of the ways of departure from hope in God by remembering the history of Israel. One who has hope in God will not forget the works of God, which include the giving of Torah. One who has hope in God will keep his commandments, for in this way one listens to the guidance provided by Torah. God had promised and demonstrated faithfulness to the covenant, while keeping the commandments was the obligation on the side of Israel. If Israel failed to fulfill its side, it opened itself to the danger that God will remove a protective hand to bring judgment upon their apostasy. They will have no hope. In a sense, we choose the sort of world in which we will live. Obviously, science describes the physical world in which we live. The physical world is a “brute fact” that we continue to learn from and understand. However, the perspective that guides the way we attend to matters in the world will shape our view of the world we inhabit.[3] A proper life of prayer will disturb our normal way of thinking about self and world, opening us to a new world of reality.[4]
[1] —Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi thinker.
[2] Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament [Westminster/John Knox, 2003], 278.
[3] William James.
[4] Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel (A&C Black, 2002), 109.
I think it is very important for us to tell our story of faith. How God has led us individually. First of all, it reminds us, has you have said, what He has done He will do, Second, when I hear what God has done in your life it strengthens me as well.
ReplyDeleteVery well said.
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