Psalm 78: Cautionary Tales

READING THE BOOK OF PSALMS

PART LIV

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Psalm 78

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Psalm 78, 72 verses long, is the second-longest entry in the Psalter.  Psalm 78 is a liturgical text which recounts the faithfulness of God and the faithlessness of people over a span of centuries.  The text, which resembles Deuteronomy 32, dwells on the Exodus and the ensuing decades in the desert.  It concludes with a justification of the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel and praise for the Davidic Dynasty.  The origin, therefore, is the Kingdom of Judah, after the Fall of Samaria (722 B.C.E.).

The purpose of this didactic text is to use the past to teach about the present:  learn the lessons previous generations failed to learn.  The portrayal of God is seemingly mixed.  Consider verses 38 and 39, in the context of rebelliousness in the wilderness, O reader:

Yet He is compassionate, He atones for crime and does not destroy,

and abundantly takes back His wrath

and does not arouse all His fury.

And He recalls that they are flesh,

a spirit that goes off and does not come back.”

–Robert Alter

Yet consider, O reader, verses toward the end of Psalm 78, in the context of the rebellion against the Davidic Dynasty and the rejection of the Temple in Jerusalem:

Yet He rejected the tent of Joseph,

and the tribe of Ephraim He did not choose.

And He chose the tribe of Judah,

Mount Zion that He loves.

–Verses 67-68, Robert Alter 

Those verses follow the recounting of violence against the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel.

Psalm 78 contains propaganda for the Davidic Dynasty.  Yet the text is far more than propaganda.  Motifs from throughout the Hebrew Bible occur here.  A partial list follows:

1. The balance of divine judgment and mercy,
2. The principle that God is like what God has done,
3. The caution not to rebel against God, and
4. The reminder that the ancestor’s story is the story of the present generation, too.

To paraphrase William Faulkner, the past is not even the past.

I, as a student and an erstwhile teacher of history, understand that the past is not even the past.  Politically charged debates about how to teach chattel slavery, for example, prove this point.  I favor brutally honest teaching of the past, so that we may learn from it.  But mine is an opinion which many people to my right scorn and label anti-American.

The author of Psalm 78, despite possessing a pronounced pro-Davidic Dynastic bias, favored a brutally honest recounting of the sins of the ancestors at the time of the Exodus and afterward.  The psalmist retold longer prose narratives in Hebrew poetry.  His cautionary poem did not have the intended effect, though.

The interpretation of the past as a cautionary tale frequently fails to have its intended effect, unfortunately.  But we must try, at least.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 28, 2023 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT ALBERT THE GREAT AND HIS PUPIL, SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS

THE FEAST OF SAINT ANDREI RUBLEV, RUSSIAN ORTHODOX ICON WRITER

THE FEAST OF DANIEL J. SIMUNDSON, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR

THE FEAST OF HENRY AUGUSTINE COLLINS, ANGLICAN THEN ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF JOSEPH BARNBY, ANGLICAN CHURCH MUSICIAN AND COMPOSER

THE FEAST OF SOMERSET CORRY LOWRY, ANGLICAN PRIEST AND HYMN WRITER

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