How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
    and grieved him in the wasteland!
⁴¹ Again and again they put God to the test;
    they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They did not remember his power –
    the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,
⁴³ the day he displayed his signs in Egypt,
    his wonders in the region of Zoan.
⁴⁴ He turned their river into blood;
    they could not drink from their streams.
⁴⁵ He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
    and frogs that devastated them.
⁴⁶ He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
    their produce to the locust.
⁴⁷ He destroyed their vines with hail
    and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
⁴⁸ He gave over their cattle to the hail,
    their livestock to bolts of lightning.
⁴⁹ He unleashed against them his hot anger,
    his wrath, indignation and hostility –
    a band of destroying angels.
⁵⁰ He prepared a path for his anger;
    he did not spare them from death
    but gave them over to the plague.
⁵¹ He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt,
    the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham.
⁵² But he brought his people out like a flock;
    he led them like sheep through the wilderness.
⁵³ He guided them safely, so they were unafraid;
    but the sea engulfed their enemies.
⁵⁴ And so he brought them to the border of his holy land,
    to the hill country his right hand had taken.
⁵⁵ He drove out nations before them
    and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance;
    he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.

⁵⁶ But they put God to the test
    and rebelled against the Most High;
    they did not keep his statutes.
⁵⁷ Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless,
    as unreliable as a faulty bow.
⁵⁸ They angered him with their high places;
    they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
⁵⁹ When God heard them, he was furious;
    he rejected Israel completely.
⁶⁰ He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,
    the tent he had set up among humans.
⁶¹ He sent the ark of his might into captivity,
    his splendour into the hands of the enemy.
⁶² He gave his people over to the sword;
    he was furious with his inheritance.
⁶³ Fire consumed their young men,
    and their young women had no wedding songs;
⁶⁴ their priests were put to the sword,
    and their widows could not weep.

⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
    as a warrior wakes from the stupor of wine.
⁶⁶ He beat back his enemies;
    he put them to everlasting shame.
⁶⁷ Then he rejected the tents of Joseph,
    he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
⁶⁸ but he chose the tribe of Judah,
    Mount Zion, which he loved.
⁶⁹ He built his sanctuary like the heights,
    like the earth that he established for ever.
⁷⁰ He chose David his servant
    and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹ from tending the sheep he brought him
    to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
    of Israel his inheritance.
⁷² And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
    with skilful hands he led them.