40
How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!
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They tested him again and again, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42
They did not keep in mind his power, or the day when he redeemed them from the foe;
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when he wrought his signs in Egypt, and his miracles in the fields of Zo'an.
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He turned their rivers to blood, so that they could not drink of their streams.
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He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them, and frogs, which destroyed them.
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He gave their crops to the caterpillar, and the fruit of their labor to the locust.
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He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamores with frost.
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He gave over their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to thunderbolts.
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He let loose on them his fierce anger, wrath, indignation, and distress, a company of destroying angels.
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He made a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death, but gave their lives over to the plague.
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He smote all the first-born in Egypt, the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham.
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Then he led forth his people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
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He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
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And he brought them to his holy land, to the mountain which his right hand had won.
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He drove out nations before them; he apportioned them for a possession and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
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Yet they tested and rebelled against the Most High God, and did not observe his testimonies,
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but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers; they twisted like a deceitful bow.
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For they provoked him to anger with their high places; they moved him to jealousy with their graven images.
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When God heard, he was full of wrath, and he utterly rejected Israel.
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He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among men,
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and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe.
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He gave his people over to the sword, and vented his wrath on his heritage.
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Fire devoured their young men, and their maidens had no marriage song.
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Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.
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Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine.
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And he put his adversaries to rout; he put them to everlasting shame.
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He rejected the tent of Joseph, he did not choose the tribe of E'phraim;
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but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves.
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He built his sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded for ever.
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He chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds;
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from tending the ewes that had young he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob his people, of Israel his inheritance.
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With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with skilful hand.