³⁸Yet he, being compassionate,

atoned for their iniquity

and did not destroy them;

he restrained his anger often

and did not stir up all his wrath.

³⁹He remembered that they were but flesh,

a wind that passes and comes not again.

⁴⁰How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness

and grieved him in the desert!

⁴¹They tested God again and again

and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

⁴²They did not remember his power5

or the day when he redeemed them from the foe,

⁴³when he performed his signs in Egypt

and his marvels in the fields of Zoan.

⁴⁴He turned their rivers to blood,

so that they could not drink of their streams.

⁴⁵He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them,

and frogs, which destroyed them.

⁴⁶He gave their crops to the destroying locust

and the fruit of their labor to the locust.

⁴⁷He destroyed their vines with hail

and their sycamores with frost.

⁴⁸He gave over their cattle to the hail

and their flocks to thunderbolts.

⁴⁹He let loose on them his burning anger,

wrath, indignation, and distress,

a company of destroying angels.

⁵⁰He made a path for his anger;

he did not spare them from death,

but gave their lives over to the plague.

⁵¹He struck down every firstborn in Egypt,

the firstfruits of their strength in the tents of Ham.

⁵²Then he led out his people like sheep

and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

⁵³He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid,

but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

⁵⁴And he brought them to his holy land,

to the mountain which his right hand had won.

⁵⁵He drove out nations before them;

he apportioned them for a possession

and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

⁵⁶Yet they tested and rebelled against the Most High God

and did not keep his testimonies,

⁵⁷but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers;

they twisted like a deceitful bow.

⁵⁸For they provoked him to anger with their high places;

they moved him to jealousy with their idols.

⁵⁹When God heard, he was full of wrath,

and he utterly rejected Israel.

⁶⁰He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh,

the tent where he dwelt among mankind,

⁶¹and delivered his power to captivity,

his glory to the hand of the foe.

⁶²He gave his people over to the sword

and vented his wrath on his heritage.

⁶³Fire devoured their young men,

and their young women had no marriage song.

⁶⁴Their priests fell by the sword,

and their widows made no lamentation.

⁶⁵Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,

like a strong man shouting because of wine.

⁶⁶And he put his adversaries to rout;

he put them to everlasting shame.

⁶⁷He rejected the tent of Joseph;

he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,

⁶⁸but he chose the tribe of Judah,

Mount Zion, which he loves.

⁶⁹He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,

like the earth, which he has founded forever.

⁷⁰He chose David his servant

and took him from the sheepfolds;

⁷¹from following the nursing ewes he brought him

to shepherd Jacob his people,

Israel his inheritance.

⁷²With upright heart he shepherded them

and guided them with his skillful hand.