Psalms 78:9-11

EPHRAIM; A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF INFIDELITY

"The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, Turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, And refused to walk in his law; And they forgat his doings, and his wondrous works that he had showed them."

"Ephraim ... turned back in the day of battle" (Psalms 78:9). Dahood interpreted this to mean that, "Despite the Ephraimites having been selected as Yahweh's elite bowmen, the Ephraimites were later rejected for cowardice."[11] Some able scholars, however, reject that view. "There is no Biblical record of any cowardice on their part; and the words here are probably a powerful metaphor meaning exactly what is more literally stated in the next two verses."[12] Maclaren also understood the passage as metaphorical.

The prominence of the Ephraimites as the largest tribe had been aided by Moses' appointment of Joshua, an Ephraimite, as his successor to lead the people into Canaan.

It was natural that Joshua, an Ephraimite, should have located the tabernacle in Ephraim's territory, effectively making that tribe, in a sense, `the capital' of all Israel. However, the great failure of Ephraim was not the rapture of the kingdom after the reign of Solomon, but their wickedness during the period of the Judges, a wickedness that eventually led to the removal of the tabernacle in Ephraim's territory (at Shiloh), and to the transfer of the leadership of the kingdom to the Davidic dynasty, as well as the relocation of the tabernacle in Jerusalem. What is in view here is not a single event, such as the rebellion against the son of Solomon, but a reference to, "The success of Israel under the leadership of Ephraim during the whole period of the Judges."[13]