I Will Open My Mouth in Parables

1Give ear, O my people, to my instruction; listen to the words of my mouth.

2I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the beginning, ¹⁷³

3that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.

4We will not hide them from their children but will declare to the next generation the praises of the LORD and His might and the wonders He has performed.

5For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,

6that the coming generation would know them— even children yet to be born—
to arise and tell their own children

7that they should put their confidence in God, not forgetting His works,
but keeping His commandments.

8Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

9The archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.

10They failed to keep God’s covenant and refused to live by His law.

11They forgot what He had done, the wonders He had shown them.

12He worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.

13He split the sea and brought them through; He set the waters upright like a wall.

14He led them with a cloud by day and with a light of fire all night.

15He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.

16He brought streams from the stone and made water flow down like rivers.

17But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.

18They willfully tested God by demanding the food they craved.

19They spoke against God, saying, “Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?

20When He struck the rock, water gushed out and torrents raged. But can He also give bread or supply His people with meat?”

21Therefore the LORD heard and was filled with wrath; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and His anger flared against Israel,

22because they did not believe God or rely on His salvation.

23Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of the heavens.

24He rained down manna for them to eat; He gave them grain from heaven. ¹⁷⁴

25Man ate the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.

26He stirred the east wind from the heavens and drove the south wind by His might.

27He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.

28He felled them in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.

29So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them what they craved.

30Yet before they had filled their desire, with the food still in their mouths,

31God’s anger flared against them, and He put to death their strongest
and subdued the young men of Israel.

32In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.

33So He ended their days in futility, ¹⁷⁵and their years in sudden terror.

34When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God.

35And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High ¹⁷⁶was their Redeemer.

36But they deceived Him with their mouths, and lied to Him with their tongues.

37Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.

38And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath.

39He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.

40How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!

41Again and again they tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

42They did not remember His power ¹⁷⁷— the day He redeemed them from the adversary,

43when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.

44He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink.

45He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.

46He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.

47He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet. ¹⁷⁸

48He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning.

49He unleashed His fury against them, wrath, indignation, and calamity—
a band of destroying angels.

50He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death
but delivered their lives to the plague.

51He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham.

52He led out His people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.

53He led them safely, so they did not fear, but the sea engulfed their enemies.

54He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had acquired.

55He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance;
He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

56But they tested and disobeyed God Most High, for they did not keep His decrees.

57They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.

58They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols.

59On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely.

60He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.

61He delivered His strength to captivity, and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.

62He surrendered His people to the sword because He was enraged by His heritage.

63Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs.

64His priests fell by the sword, but their widows could not lament.

65Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.

66He beat back His foes; He put them to everlasting shame.

67He rejected the tent of Joseph and refused the tribe of Ephraim.

68But He chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which He loved.

69He built His sanctuary like the heights, like the earth He has established forever.

70He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;

71from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob,
of Israel His inheritance.

72So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands.