Psalms 73 - 79
73
How good God is to the upright!
How good to those who are pure in heart!
My foothold had all but given way,
because when the boasts of sinners roused my envy
when I saw how they prosper.
No pain, no suffering is theirs;
they are sleek and sound in limb;
they are not plunged in trouble as other men are,
nor do they suffer the torments of mortal men.
Therefore pride is their collar of jewels
and violence the robe that wraps them round.
Their eyes gleam through folds of fat;
while vain fancies pass through their minds.
Their talk is all sneers and malice;
scornfully they spread their calumnies.
Their slanders reach up to heaven,
while their tongues ply to and fro on earth.
And so my people follow their lead
and find nothing to blame in them,
even though they say, 'What does God know?
The Most High neither knows nor cares.'
So wicked men talk, yet still they prosper,
and rogues amass great wealth.
So it was all in vain that I kept my heart pure
and washed my hands in innocence.
For all day long I suffer torment
and am punished every morning.
Yet I have let myself talk on in this fashion,
I should have betrayed the family of God.
So I set myself to think this out
but I found it too hard for me,
until I went into God's sacred courts;
there I saw clearly what their end would be.
How often thou dost set them on slippery ground
and drive them headlong into ruin!
Then in a moment how dreadful their end,
cut off root and branch by death with all its terrors,
like a dream when a man rouses himself, O Lord,
like images in sleep which are dismissed on waking!
When my heart was embittered
I felt pangs of envy,
I would not understand, so brutish was I,
I was a mere beast in thy sight, O God.
Yet I am always with thee,
thou holdest my right hand;
thou dost guide me by thy counsel
and afterwards wilt receive me with glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee?
And having thee, I desire nothing else on earth.
Though heart and body fail,
yet God is my possession for ever.
They who are far from thee are lost;
thou dost destroy all who wantonly forsake thee.
But my chief good is to be near thee, O God;
I have chosen thee, Lord GOD, to be my refuge.
74
Why hast thou cast us off, O God? Is it for ever?
Why art thou stern, so angry with the sheep of thy flock?
Remember the assembly of thy people,
taken long since for thy own,
and Mount Zion, which was thy home.
Now at last restore what was ruined beyond repair,
the wreck that the foe has made of thy sanctuary.
The shouts of thy enemies filled the holy place,
they planted their standards there as tokens of victory.
They brought it crashing down,
like woodmen plying their axes in the forest;
they ripped the carvings clean out,
they smashed them with hatchet and pick.
They set fire to thy sanctuary,
tore down and polluted the shrine sacred to thy name.
They said to themselves, 'We will sweep them away',
and all over the land they burnt God's holy places.
We cannot see what lies before us, we have no prophet now;
we have no one who knows how long this is to last.
How long, O God, will the enemy taunt thee?
Will the adversary pour scorn on thy name for ever?
Why dost thou hold back thy hand,
why keep thy right hand within thy bosom?
But thou, O God, thou king from of old,
thou mighty conqueror all the world over,
by thy power thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two
and break the sea-serpent's head above the waters;
thou didst crush Leviathan's many head
and throw him to the sharks for food.
Thou didst open channels for spring and torrent;
thou didst dry up rivers never known to fail.
The day is thine, and the night is thine also,
thou didst ordain the light of moon and sun;
thou hast fixed all regions of the earth;
summer and winter, thou didst create them both.
Remember, O LORD, the taunts of the enemy,
the scorn a savage nation pours on thy name.
Cast not to the bests the soul that confesses thee;
forget not for ever the sufferings of thy servants.
Look upon thy creatures: they are filled with hatred,
and earth is the haunt of violence.
Let not the oppressed be shamed and turned away;
let the poor and downtrodden praise thy name.
Rise up, O God, maintain thy own cause;
remember how brutal men taunt thee all day long.
Ignore no longer the cries of thy assailants,
the mounting clamour of those who defy thee.
75
We give thee thanks, O God, we give thee thanks;
thy name is brought very near to us
in the story of thy wonderful deeds.
I seized the appointed time
and then I judged mankind with justice.
When the earth rocks, with all who live on it,
I make its pillars firm.
To the boastful I say, 'Boast no more',
and to the wicked, 'Do not toss your proud horns:
toss not your horns against high heaven
nor speak arrogantly against your Creator.'
No power from the east nor from the west,
no power from the wilderness, can raise a man up.
For God is judge;
he puts one man down and raises up another.
The LORD holds a cup in his hand,
and the wine foams in it, hot with spice;
he offers it to every man for drink,
and all the wicked on earth must drain it to the dregs.
But I will glorify him for ever;
I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.
I will break off the horns of the wicked,
but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted high.
76
In Judah God is known,
his name is great in Israel;
his tent is pitched in Salem,
in Zion his battle-quarters are set up.
He has broken the flashing arrows,
shield and sword and weapons of war.
Thou art terrible, O Lord, and mighty:
men that just for plunder stand aghast,
the boldest swoon away,
and the strongest cannot lift a hand.
At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob,
rider and horse fall senseless.
Terrible art thou, O Lord;
who can stand in thy presence when thou art angry?
Thou didst give sentence out of heaven;
the earth was afraid and kept silence.
O God, at thy rising in judgement
to deliver all humble men on the earth,
for all her fury Edom shall confess thee,
and the remnant left in Hamath shall dance in worship.
Make vows to the LORD your God, and pay them duly;
let the peoples all around him bring their tribute;
for he breaks the spirit of princes,
he is the terror of the kings on earth.
77
I cried aloud to God,
I cried to God, and he heard me.
In the day of my distress I sought the Lord,
and by night I lifted my outspread hands in prayer.
I lay sweating and nothing would cool me;
I refused all comfort.
When I called God to mind, I groaned;
as I lay thinking, darkness came over my spirit.
My eyelids were tightly closed;
I was dazed and I could not speak.
My thoughts went back to times long past,
I remembered forgotten years;
all night long I was in deep distress,
as I lay thinking, my spirit was sunk in despair.
Will the Lord reject us for evermore
and never again show favour?
Has his unfailing love now failed us utterly,
must his promise time and again be unfulfilled?
Has God forgotten to be gracious,
has he in anger withheld his mercies?
'Has his right hand', I said, 'lost its grasp?
Does it hang powerless, the arm of the Most High?'
But then, O LORD, I call to mind thy deeds;
I recall thy wonderful acts in times gone by.
I meditate upon thy works
and muse on all that thou hast done.
O God, thy way is holy;
what god is so great as our God?
Thou art the God who workest miracles;
thou hast shown the nations thy power.
With thy strong arm thou didst redeem thy people,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph.
The waters saw thee, O God,
they saw thee and writhed in anguish;
the ocean was troubled to its depths.
The clouds poured water, the skies thundered,
thy arrows flashed hither and thither.
The sound of thy thunder was in the whirlwind,
thy lightnings lit up the world,
earth shook and quaked.
Thy path was through the sea, the way through mighty
waters,
and no man marked thy footsteps.
Thou didst guide thy people like a flock of sheep,
under the hand of Moses and Aaron.
78
Mark my teaching, O my people,
listen to the words I am to speak.
I will tell you a story with a meaning,
I will expound the riddle of things past,
things that we have heard and know,
and our fathers have repeated to us.
From their sons we will not hide
the praises of the LORD and his might
nor the wonderful acts he has performed;
then they shall repeat them to the next generation.
He laid on Jacob a solemn charge
and established a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach their sons,
that it might be known to a future generation,
to children yet unborn,
and these would repeat it to their sons in turn.
He charged them to put their trust in God,
to hold his great acts ever in mind
and to keep all his commandments;
not to do as their fathers did,
a disobedient and rebellious race,
a generation with no firm purpose,
with hearts not fixed steadfastly on God.
The men of Ephraim, bowmen all and marksmen,
turned and ran in the hour of battle.
They had not kept God's covenant
and had refused to live by his law;
they forgot all that he had done
and the wonderful acts which he had shown them.
He did wonders in their fathers' sight
in the land of Egypt, the county of Zoan;
he divided the sea and took them through it,
making the water stand up like banks on either side.
He led them with a cloud by day
and all night long with a glowing fire.
He cleft the rock in the wilderness
and gave them water to drink, abundant as the sea;
he brought streams out of the cliff
and made water run down like rivers.
But they sinned against him yet again:
in the desert they defied the Most High,
they tried God's patience wilfully,
demanding food to satisfy their hunger.
They vented their grievance against God and said,
'Can God spread a table in the wilderness?'
When he struck a rock, water gushed out
until the gullies overflowed;
they said, 'Can he give bread as well,
can he provide meat for his people?'
When he heard this, the LORD was filled with fury:
fire raged against Jacob,
anger blazed up against Israel,
because they put no trust in God
and had no faith in his power to save.
Then he gave orders to the skies above
and he threw open heaven's doors,
he rained down manna for them to eat
and gave them the grain of heaven.
So men ate the bread of angels;
he sent them food to their heart's desire.
He let loose the east wind from heaven
and drove the south wind by his power'
he rained meat like a dust-storm upon them,
flying birds like the sand of the sea-shore,
which he made settle all over the camp
round the tents where they lived.
So the people ate and were filled,
for he had given them what they craved.
Yet they did not abandon their complaints
even while the food was in their mouths.
Then the anger of God blazed up against them;
he spread death among their stoutest men
and brought the young men of Israel to the ground
In spite of all, they persisted in their sin
and had no faith in his wonderful acts.
So in one moment he snuffed out their lives
and ended their years in calamity.
When he struck them, they began to seek him,
they would turn and look eagerly for God;
they remembered that God was their Creator,
that God Most High was their deliverer.
But still they beguiled him with words
and deceived him with fine speeches;
they were not loyal to him in their hearts
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
Yet he wiped out their guilt
and did not smother his own natural affection;
often he restrained his wrath
and did not rouse his anger to its height.
He remembered they they were only mortal men,
who pass by like a wind and never return.
How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the desert!
Again and again they tried God's patience
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
They did not remember his prowess
on the day when he saved them from the enemy,
how he set his signs in Egypt,
his portents in the land of Zoan.
He turned their streams into blood,
and they could not drink the running water.
He sent swarms of flies which devoured them,
and frogs which brought devastation;
he gave their harvest over to locusts
and their produce to the grubs;
he killed their vines with hailstones
and their figs with torrents of rain;
he abandoned their cattle to the plague
and their beasts to the arrows of pestilence.
He loosed upon them the violence of his anger,
wrath and enmity and rage,
launching those messengers of evil
to open the way for his fury,
He struck down all the first-born in Egypt,
the flower of their manhood in the tents of Ham,
not shielding their lives from death
but abandoning their bodies to the plague
But he led out his own people like sheep
and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
He led them in safety and they were not afraid,
and the sea closed over their enemies.
He brought them to his holy mountain,
the hill which his right hand had won;
he drove out nations before them,
he allotted their lands to Israel as a possession
and settled his tribes in their dwellings.
Yet they tried God's patience and rebelled against him;
they did not keep the commands of the Most High;
they were renegades, traitors like their fathers,
they changed, they went back like a bow.
They provoked him to anger with their hill-shrines
and roused his jealousy with their carved images.
When God heard this, he put them out of mind
and utterly rejected Israel.
He forsook his home in Shiloh,
the tabernacle in which he dwelt among men;
he surrendered the symbols of his strength in to captivity
and his pride into enemy hands;
he gave his people over to the sword
and put his own possession out of mind.
Fire devoured his young men,
and his maidens could raise no lament for them;
his priests fell by the sword,
and his widows could not weep.
Then the Lord awoke as a sleeper awakes,
like a warrior heated with wine;
he struck his foes in the back parts
and brought perpetual shame upon them.
He despised the clan of Joseph
and did not choose he tribe of Ephraim;
he chose the tribe of Judah
and Mount Zion which he loved;
he built his sanctuary high as the heavens,
founded like the earth to last for ever.
He chose David to be his servant
and he took him from his sheepfolds;
he brought him from minding the ewes
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob;
and he shepherded them in singleness of heart
and guided them with a skilful hand.
79
O God, the heathen have set foot in thy domain,
defiled thy holy temple
and laid Jerusalem to ruins.
They have thrown the dead bodies of thy servants
to feed the birds of the air;
they have made thy loyal servants carrion for wild beasts.
Their blood is spilled all round Jerusalem like water,
and there they lie unburied.
We suffer the contempt of our neighbours,
and gibes and mockery of all around us.
How long, O LORD, wilt thou be roused to such fury?
Must thy jealousy rage like a fire?
Pour out thy wrath over nations which do not know thee
and over kingdoms which do not invoke thee by name;
see how they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his homesteads.
Do not remember against us the guilt of past generations
but let thy compassion come swiftly to meet us,
we have been brought so low.
Help us, O God our saviour, for the honour of thy name;
for thy name's sake deliver us and wipe out our sins.
Why should the nations ask, 'Where is their God?'
Let thy vengeance for the bloody slaughter of thy servants
fall on those nations before our very eyes.
Let the groaning of the captives reach thy presence
and in thy great might set free death's prisoners.
As for the contempt our neighbours pour on thee, O Lord,
turn it back sevenfold on their own heads.
Then we thy people, the flock which thou dost shepherd,
will give thee thanks for ever
and repeat thy praise to every generation.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Posted Jul 2, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC
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