This is the second-longest psalm in the book, seventy-two verses retelling the entire wilderness generation’s story — not to shame them privately, but specifically so the next generation would hear it and choose differently. It ends, after all that failure, at the unlikely place God actually settled: a shepherd boy named David.
A study in Psalm 78 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 14 min read
We Will Not Hide Them From Their Children
“Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old… We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.”
Psalm 78:1-2, 4
The stated purpose comes before a single historical detail is told — this long recital is not nostalgia. It is deliberately educational, meant to arm the next generation with a true memory their parents nearly lost.
“And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.”
Psalm 78:8
The goal named directly here is not merely knowledge but a different heart — information alone, the psalm assumes, will not be enough to prevent the same failure from simply repeating itself.
Can God Furnish A Table In The Wilderness?
“And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?”
Psalm 78:18-20
The question is asked immediately after describing a miracle they had already witnessed — water from solid rock. Doubt here is not a lack of evidence; it is a refusal to let yesterday’s proof actually settle today’s question.
Man Did Eat Angels’ Food
“Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full.”
Psalm 78:23-25
God’s answer to their doubting question arrives immediately, and it is generous rather than punitive — “doors of heaven,” a table furnished after all, precisely the impossible provision they had just insisted He could not make.
“In the words of the psalmist, God gave them ‘of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels’ food’… that is, food provided for them by the angels.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 297
White explains the phrase “angels’ food” plainly — not a poetic exaggeration, but a literal description of angelic agency in the manna’s daily arrival, and immediately after this she calls the manna itself a type of Christ, who came from God to give life to the world.
Being Full Of Compassion, He Forgave Their Iniquity
“For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant. But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath.”
Psalm 78:37-38
“Many a time” is the phrase worth sitting with — not a single, dramatic act of mercy, but a repeated pattern, patience extended again and again to a people whose heart, the psalm has already said plainly, was not actually right toward Him.
“For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.”
Psalm 78:39
God’s patience here is tied explicitly to human frailty, not to Israel’s worthiness — a wind that passes and does not return, an image of genuine fragility rather than an excuse for the repeated rebellion the rest of the psalm still holds them fully accountable for.
He Chose David Also His Servant
“Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim: but chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.”
Psalm 78:67-68
After sixty-six verses of rebellion, judgment, and patience, the psalm turns to a specific choice — not Ephraim, the tribe with the stronger early claim to leadership, but Judah, and the hill where the temple would eventually stand.
“He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds: from following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.”
Psalm 78:70-72
The psalm’s final image answers its own opening question about what the next generation should actually learn — a whole nation’s repeated failure in the wilderness, closing not in despair but at a sheepfold, with an unlikely shepherd God was already preparing to feed them better than they had ever fed themselves.
