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How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness :
 and grieved him in the desert!
Again and again they put God to the test :
 and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
They did not remember his power :
 or the day when he redeemed them from the enemy;
How he wrought his signs in Egypt :
 his wonders in the country of Zoan.
For he turned their rivers into blood :
 so that they could not drink from the streams.
He sent swarms of flies that devoured them :
 and frogs that laid them waste.
He gave their crops to the locust :
 and the fruits of their labour to the grasshopper.
He struck down their vines with hailstones :
 and their sycomore trees with frost.
He gave up their cattle to the hail :
 and their flocks to the flash of the lightning.
He loosed on them the fierceness of his anger,
   his fury, his indignation and distress :
 and these were his messengers of destruction.
He opened a path for his fury :
 he would not spare them from death,
but gave up their lives to the pestilence.
He struck down the firstborn of Egypt :
 the first-fruits of their manhood in the dwellings of Ham.
As for his own people, he led them out like sheep :
 and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
He led them in safety, and they were not afraid :
 but the sea covered their enemies.
He brought them to his holy land :
 to the mountains that his own right hand had won.
He drove out the nations before them,
   and apportioned their lands as a possession :
 and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
But they rebelled against God Most High and put him to the test :
 they would not obey his commandments.
They turned back and dealt treacherously like their fathers :
 they turned aside, slack as an unstrung bow.
They provoked him to anger with their heathen shrines :
 and moved him to jealousy with their carved images.
God heard and was angry, he utterly rejected Israel :
 he forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh,
   the tent where he dwelt among men.
He gave the ark of his might into captivity :
 and his glory into the hands of the enemy.
He delivered his people to the sword :
 and was enraged against his own possession.
Fire devoured the young men :
 there was no one to bewail the maidens;
Their priests fell by the sword :
 and there was none to mourn for the widows.
Then the Lord awoke like a man out of sleep :
 like a warrior that had been overcome with wine.
He struck the backs of his enemies as they fled :
 and put them to perpetual shame.
He rejected the family of Joseph :
 he refused the tribe of Ephraim.
But he chose the tribe of Judah :
 and the hill of Zion which he loved.
He built his sanctuary like the heights of heaven :
 like the earth which he had founded for ever.
He chose David his servant :
 and took him from the sheepfolds;
He brought him from following the ewes :
 to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
   and of Israel his own possession.
So he tended them with upright heart :
 and guided them with skilful hand.