Psalms 78:65-72

GOD'S ANSWER TO THE SITUATION

"Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, Like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. And he smote his adversaries backward: He put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover he refused the tent of Joseph, And chose not the tribe of Ephraim, But chose the tribe of Judah, The mount Zion which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like the heights, Like the earth which he hath established forever. He chose David also his servant, And took him from the sheepfolds: From following the ewes that have their young, he brought him, To be the shepherd of Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he was their shepherd according to the integrity of his heart. And guided them by the skillfulness of his hands."

"The Lord awaked" (Psalms 78:65). This is another anthropomorphic metaphor. Of course, God had not been asleep.

These verses state the purpose of God to make David king and to establishing His kingdom "forever," referring not alone to the fleshly line of David's successors, but to the ultimate resurrection of Christ to sit upon that Greater Throne in Heaven, of which the Davidic throne was indeed a very dim and inadequate shadow.

There is a clue here to the time of this psalm.

"The shepherd of Jacob ... and of Israel." David ruled over all of Israel, not merely Judah; so the days of the divided kingdom had not yet come as this psalm was written. The division of the kingdom that resulted from the Ephraimitic rebellion against Rehoboam was to come some eighty years afterward. Not even the kingship of David appears to have been established at the time of this psalm, but only the statement of God's intention to accomplish it.

"His sanctuary ... like the earth which he established forever" (Psalms 78:69). This was not a vain vision. God's sanctuary, typified by the tabernacle on mount Zion, is indeed eternal. "Those who have truly become the subjects of the Christ, the King of Israel and of the world, and who dwell with God in his house (the church of the living God), by dwelling in Jesus, will not rebel against him anymore, nor ever forget his wonders, but will faithfully tell them to generations to come."[24]

"He chose David" (Psalms 78:70). "This election of David gives its impress to the history of salvation even on into eternity. It is genuinely Asaphic (that is, Asaph himself wrote it, not some of his descendants) in that it so designedly portrayed how the shepherd of the flock of Jesse became the shepherd of the flock of Jahve."[25]

This great psalm reminds us of the speech of Stephen the Martyr in Acts 7, in that it recounts the terrible record established in the rebellious history of Israel.