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