I will open my mouth in parables
(Matthew 13:34-35)
1
Give ear, O my people, to my instruction; listen to the words of my mouth.
2
I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the beginning,(a)
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that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.
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We 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.
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For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,
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that the coming generation would know them— even children yet to be born— to arise and tell their own children
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that they should put their confidence in God, not forgetting His works, but keeping His commandments.
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Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.
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The archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.
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They failed to keep God’s covenant and refused to live by His law.
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They forgot what He had done, the wonders He had shown them.
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He worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
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He split the sea and brought them through; He set the waters upright like a wall.
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He led them with a cloud by day and with a light of fire all night.
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He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.
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He brought streams from the stone and made water flow down like rivers.
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But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
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They willfully tested God by demanding the food they craved.
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They spoke against God, saying, “Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?
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When He struck the rock, water gushed out and torrents raged. But can He also give bread or supply His people with meat?”
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Therefore the LORD heard and was filled with wrath; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and His anger flared against Israel,
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because they did not believe God or rely on His salvation.
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Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of the heavens.
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He rained down manna for them to eat; He gave them grain from heaven.(b)
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Man ate the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.
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He stirred the east wind from the heavens and drove the south wind by His might.
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He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
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He felled them in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.
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So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them what they craved.
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Yet before they had filled their desire, with the food still in their mouths,
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God’s anger flared against them, and He put to death their strongest and subdued the young men of Israel.
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In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; despite His wonderful works, they did not believe.
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So He ended their days in futility,(c) and their years in sudden terror.
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When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God.
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And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High (d) was their Redeemer.
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But they deceived Him with their mouths, and lied to Him with their tongues.
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Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.
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And 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.
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He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.
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How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert!
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Again and again they tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
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They did not remember His power (e)— the day He redeemed them from the adversary,
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when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan.
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He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink.
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He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.
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He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust.
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He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet.(f)
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He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning.
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He unleashed His fury against them, wrath, indignation, and calamity— a band of destroying angels.
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He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but delivered their lives to the plague.
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He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham.
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He led out His people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness.
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He led them safely, so they did not fear, but the sea engulfed their enemies.
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He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had acquired.
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He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
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But they tested and disobeyed God Most High, for they did not keep His decrees.
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They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.
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They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols.
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On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely.
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He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.
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He delivered His strength to captivity, and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.
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He surrendered His people to the sword because He was enraged by His heritage.
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Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs.
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His priests fell by the sword, but their widows could not lament.
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Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.
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He beat back His foes; He put them to everlasting shame.
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He rejected the tent of Joseph and refused the tribe of Ephraim.
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But He chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which He loved.
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He built His sanctuary like the heights, like the earth He has established forever.
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He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;
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from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance.
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So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands.
Footnotes