Psalm Chapter 78 - Maschil of Asaph

Psalm 78: The Long Memory

This is the longest song in the Psalter save one, and its plea is simpler than its length suggests: do not forget. Asaph tells the whole bruised history of Israel — the sea divided, the rock struck, the manna falling, the people grumbling, the people forgetting, the people forgetting again — and he tells it because he is terrified the next generation will misplace it. Memory, for Asaph, is not nostalgia; it is oxygen. A people who forget what God has done will invent new gods out of their own anxiety, and those gods will not feed them. Notice how tenderly the psalm speaks of God's restraint: "He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again." Even as we forget him, he remembers us. The whole thing ends with David taken from the sheepfolds — a shepherd shepherding shepherds. Tell your children the old stories, Asaph is saying. Tell them before the wind carries them away.

00:00 Dark Sayings of Old
01:00 The Generation to Come
02:00 Manna and Murmuring
03:00 Angels' Food Rained Down
04:00 A Wind That Passeth Away
05:00 The Signs in Egypt Remembered
06:00 The Flock Led Out Safely
07:00 The Tabernacle of Shiloh Forsaken
08:00 From the Sheepfolds Came David