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It would also appear that Psalm 78 has been intentionally placed next to Psalm 77. Just as Psalm 77 ended with Moses and Aaron leading the people ‘like a flock’ (verse 29), Psalm 78 ends with David as the shepherd of his people (verse 71). Psalm 77:1 begins by asking God to hear; 78:1 asks by asking the people to do so. And just as Ps. 77:5 and 11 (Hebrew verses 6 and 12) reflect on God’s mighty deeds ‘of old’ (mi-qedem) so in 78:2 the psalmist will speak of them too (also using qedem). The story in Psalm 78:11 is about the same mighty ‘acts’ (pele’) as God’s ‘work’ as in 77:12, using the same Hebrew word with a different ending (pile’eka). Similarly we read again of the mighty waters (77:16, 19; 78:13, 16, 20), of God’s ‘redeeming’ his people (77:15 and 78:35) who are addressed again as Jacob (78:5, 21, 31, 71 and 77:15), and who in Ps. 78:52 are led ‘like a flock’ (ka‘eder), as in 77:20 (ca-ṣo’n).

Despite these connections, Psalm 78 is clearly different: it is not a lament, nor even an epic poem; it is closer to the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy, except it is expressed more obviously in poetry, and the key focus of its seven strophes (ending at verses 9, 17, 32, 40, 56, 65) is the importance of ‘remembering’ and learning lessons from the past (verses 8, 39). Pavan argues that Psalm 78 is the only *Asaphite psalm with a consistent focus on ‘remembering’ and this explains its central position not only within the eleven psalms forming the Asaphite collection, but also within Book Three as a whole.⁸⁶ The order of ‘remembering’ is not chronological: it starts with the arrival in Canaan (verses 9–39), then returns to the plagues (verses 42–51: here only seven, rather than ten), then moves forward to the wilderness wanderings (verses 52–55) and finishes with the time of the judges (verses 56–66). Unlike any of the previous psalms in Book Three, it is interested in David (verses 67–72). From this psalm onwards Book Three moves towards an increasing concern for David and Zion.

Jewish reception tends to view the psalm in its entirety, whilst Christian reception prefers to isolate separate verses. As with most of the Asaphite psalms, Jewish reception is more reflective and pessimistic. The whole psalm is seen as a ‘parable’—as a story about the Law.⁸⁷ The theme of exile is assumed and this is read in the light of the giving of the laws, and Israel’s failure to keep them, although the ending proclaims positively that only David and his seed are the true Torah rulers of Israel.⁸⁸ Some Jewish commentators note some positive elements in the psalm: the men of the wilderness, despite their transgressions, are still seen as ‘giants of faith’, and the miracles testify to the Merciful God, who, even without evening sacrifice (verse 38) can still forgive iniquity.⁸⁹

Christian readings tend to view the psalm in the light of the Jews’ rejection of Christ, although the church is exhorted to learn from these lessons as well.⁹⁰ For example, in the New Testament, 1 Cor. 10:8 uses the historical reflections in the psalm (using here verse 18) to exhort the early Christians to repentance. 1 *Clement 15 also uses Psalm 78 (amongst its several citations) about the church’s need ‘to be joined to those who are ‘peaceful, and not to those who pretend to wish for it’; *Justin Martyr makes the same appeal in his Dial. 27.4; 48.2; 80.4; and 140.2. The psalm is thus used in part as practical instruction and in part as allegory. The citation of verses 24–25 in the ‘bread discourse’ in John 6:31—partly using the same Exodus typology—encouraged commentators such as *Augustine to comment: ‘Let us turn back to the one who performed these miracles. He himself is the bread that came down from heaven… for people to eat the bread of angels, the Lord of angels became a human being… if he had not become this, we would not have his flesh…’ ⁹¹

But above all, it is the reference to the didactic and even parabolic nature of the psalm in verses 1–2 (heightened by the Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashal in verse 2 as parabolais) which gave Christians the license to allegorise. (This has been the case with all of Psalms 73–77; it is simply made more explicit here.) Matt. 13:35 cites Ps. 78:2 to illustrate the theory of parables; from this, the early fathers also had much to say on these two verses. *Clement of Alexandria, for example, uses these verses as key texts in Miscellanies 5.25.1 where the references to ‘parable’ and ‘dark sayings of old’ are seen as a witness to Jesus, the eternal word, the Logos, who is eternally present in the psalms and able to unlock for us enigmatic truths.⁹² (This is a different but related view of the expanded heading to the psalm provided in the *Targum: ‘The insight of the Holy Spirit, by the hands of Asaph’.) *Eusebius reads the psalm in a similar *prosopological way as Augustine: the psalmist begins by speaking in the name of Christ; and Christ ends it by speaking in the name of the Church. So Ps. 78:1–2 is ‘the voice of the prophet’ (i.e. Asaph) through whom Christ is speaking. In all these readings the ‘hidden things’ in the psalm are brought to light through the person of Christ. The dividing of the sea in verse 14 is now a reference to the bringing of ‘spiritual Israel’ (the church) through the waters of baptism; the cloud in verse 14 speaks of the incarnation of Christ, and the fire, to that latter day of judgement; the smitten rock in verse 16 is Jesus Christ crucified, out of whose side flowed living water. The manna in verses 24–25 speaks of Christ descending from heaven to give us the food of angels; the water turned to blood in verse 44 is a reference to the new covenant; and the ‘enemy’s hand’ in verse 61 refers to Judas and Pilate.⁹³ In some cases this led commentators such as *Luther to accuse the Jews of trusting too much in the ‘temporality’ of their Law (using Ps. 78:5, ‘He has established a decree in Jacob…’) rather than seeing the eternal covenant made manifest in Christ.⁹⁴

Nevertheless the use of this psalm for penitential worship, in both faiths, is clear. In Jewish tradition, in the weekday evening service according to the rite of the ninth-century Babylonian liturgist Amram Gaon, verse 38 is used after Ps. 22:10 and the *Kaddish, to be followed again by Ps. 20:10. Preceded by Psalm 134, this develops the theme of repentance and the mercy of God.⁹⁵ The psalm as a whole is read in Christian tradition as an exhortation for repentance, and is part of the *Commination service, concerned with the judgement of God, in the *BCP.

Perhaps the most intriguing reading is of verse 69, which in the NRSV reads: ‘He built his sanctuary like the high heavens’. The Hebrew for ‘high heavens’ (ramim) is unclear; the noun, here in the plural, could come from the word for ox, and indeed the Targum paraphrases this verse ‘And he built his sanctuary like the horn of a wild ox, established like the earth, which he set in order for ever and ever’. The *Septuagint prefers to read ‘like wild oxen’ as ‘like unicorns’ (hōs monokerōtōn, i.e. mythical creatures ‘with one horn’), as indicating an invincible animal which was nevertheless under God’s power. This was perpetuated through the Latin translation (‘et aedificavit sicut unicornium sanctificium suum’), and although this was a strange comparison, it encouraged a distinctively Christian reading. The ‘sanctuary’ was the Virgin Mary; the unicorn was Christ, who ‘took sanctuary’ in her womb.⁹⁶ So in these verses at the end of Psalm 78, which speak of God’s choice of David, it is Christ, the son of David, the ‘unicorn’ from the sanctuary of Mary, who is really being spoken of—all highlighting the parabolic nature of this psalm.

Allegorical exegesis provided a rich tradition of visual exegesis in illuminated manuscripts, and again centred on individual verses rather than on the psalm as a whole. For example, the *Theodore Psalter (fol. 100r), alongside verse 1, shows Asaph on a throne, teaching, but the figure of a beardless Christ stands behind, offering inspiration; in the *Bristol Psalter (fol. 125v) and *Barberini Psalter (fol. 103r) it is Christ himself who is teaching. *Carolingian Psalters are the first to develop the motif of the unicorn. The *Stuttgart Psalter (fol. 108v) depicts an image of a unicorn at the end of the psalm: a hand from heaven points down to the animal, and David is blessing it: this is represented in Plate 2.

A different image is in the *Utrecht Psalter (fol. 45r) where the hand of God points down to a figure (possibly Moses) reading from the law to a crowd of people. Behind him (and three other figures) is a youthful David, crowned, with sheep at his feet; and behind David is a unicorn.⁹⁷

The Byzantine *Pantokrator Psalter (fol. 109v) also ends the psalm with a motif inspired by the Latin translation of ‘unicorn’, where here the Virgin is actually suckling the animal. The psalm is actually given a Christian focus from beginning to end. At the beginning in Pantokrator it is Christ, not Moses, who is preaching to the Jews about their disobedience (fol. 102v), and verses 24–25 (on the manna from heaven) depict Christ addressing the Jews (fol. 105r), with an inscription from John 6.⁹⁸ Verse 65 (‘Then the Lord awoke as from sleep’) has an image in both Pantokrator (fol. 109r) and *Khludov (fol. 78v) of Christ outside the tomb; Khludov adds an image of David facing Christ as if he is prophesying his resurrection.⁹⁹ Khludov (fol. 79r) has other interesting illustrations for verses 67–70: of a church on a high mountain, inscribed with ‘Holy Sion’ with the Virgin and Child in a courtyard below;¹⁰⁰ at the foot of the mountain is inscribed ‘David anointed by Samuel’, as if the motif of Christ coming from Zion has been prophesied by David himself (using Rom. 11:26 as an interpretative text).¹⁰¹ The fourteenth-century Byzantine Kiev Psalter, by contrast, has David, at the foot of the mountain, pointing towards the summit at the shining icon of Mary and Jesus.¹⁰²

The Jewish *Parma Psalter (fol. 107v) by contrast emphasises the didactic nature of this psalm, and the possibility of the obedience of the Jews in learning from the past: a figure in a light red garment raises an open book in his right hand and extends his left to an assembly of eight figures; they look intently at the book which has the first two words of the ten commandments, illustrating verses 1 and 5 and the Jewish message of the psalm overall.¹⁰³

Because of its rich interpretation, despite its salutary and serious contents, and on account of its long narrative form, Psalm 78 became a challenging psalm for experimentation in English in the sixteenth-century. Mary *Sidney, for example, casts this in ottava rima: a form of Italian origin, connected with heroic poetry, with eight-line stanzas using ten or eleven syllables, rhyming a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c; this was the form the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton used in The Barons’ Warres on account of its ‘majesty, perfection and solidity’.¹⁰⁴ Sidney’s account of verse 1–3 (a short example of the twenty-seven stanzas in all) runs as follows:¹⁰⁵

A grave discourse to utter I intend

The age of time I purpose to renew

You, O my charge, to what I teach attend;

Hear what I speak, and what you hear ensue.

The things our fathers did to us commend,

The same are they I recommend to you,

Which though but heard we know most true to be:

We heard, but heard, of who themselves did see…

This psalm has inspired surprisingly little Church music, most of which uses the beginning of the psalm rather than the end. For example, both Giovanni *Gabrieli and Heinrich *Schütz composed pieces, with a Latin setting, nearly half a century after Mary Sidney, of the first three verses of this psalm. Gabrieli’s ‘Attendite popule meus’ was performed at St. Mark’s, Venice; Schütz’s ‘Attendite popule meus legem’, was probably performed in his church in Dresden. Whether the speaker is assumed to be Christ or Moses is not made explicit. *Handel’s arrangement is different because, using Charles Jennens’ libretto, it is for the concert hall rather than the church. His ‘Israel in Egypt’ was performed in 1739, and the texts are Psalms 105, 106 and 78 rather than anything from Exodus. Psalm 78:12–13 is used in Part I, as part of the ‘Plagues in Egypt’, thus illustrating that the message of the psalm is essentially about the importance of remembering God’s mercy for his people.¹⁰⁶

The theme of God’s overall mercy is also brought out in Arthur *Wragg’s more contemporary stark black and white image of Ps. 78:38: ‘But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not’ (Figure 2). Wragg, greatly influenced by the Great Depression, sketched the psalms with graphic social comment. Here we see the horrors of the suffering of humanity, and violent deaths throughout time. Yet memory prevails: to the right and left of these interwoven images are two palms: each bears the stigmata.¹⁰⁷

Figure 2 ‘But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not’. (Ps. 78:38).

Source: Wragg, A. 1934: The Psalms for Modern Life. New York: Claude Kendall.

The reception of this psalm testifies in both faith traditions to the importance of remembering, followed by penitence and trust in God’s mercy, with each tradition recognising the ‘parabolic’ nature of the psalm. Christian readings, through verbal and visual exegesis, have been more allusive, whilst nevertheless emphasising the motif of human failure in this psalm.