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Great God, how oft did Isr'el prove Psalm 78 Part 4

Isaac Watts's setting of Psalm 78:32–72, printed in 1719 in The Psalms of David Imitated, where he set the psalms "in the language of the New Testament".

WRITTEN BY

Isaac Watts 1674–1748

PRINTED

1719 The Psalms of David Imitated · no. 4

METRE

Long Metre 8.8.8.8 · 7 stanzas

WRITTEN ON

Psalm 78:32–72 the verse printed above it

The hymn, and the Scripture in it

All 7 stanzas as Watts printed them, with the verses their lines echo beside them. Point at a line to join it to its verse; click to read the passage.

SHARED WORDSthe verse shares the line's wording ECHOproposed by an AI model, confirmed by a separate check Not the author's own notes

The psalm it sets

Watts made this hymn from Psalm 78:32–72, "in the language of the New Testament": a paraphrase, not a translation. The line that comes closest to it is marked.

32In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; despite His wonderful works, they did not believe. 33So He ended their days in futility, and their years in sudden terror. 34When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God. 35And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer. 36But they deceived Him with their mouths, and lied to Him with their tongues. 37Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant. 38And 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. 39He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return. 40How often they disobeyed Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! 41Again and again they tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel. 42They did not remember His power — the day He redeemed them from the adversary, 43when He performed His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the fields of Zoan. 44He turned their rivers to blood, and from their streams they could not drink. 45He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them. 46He gave their crops to the grasshopper, the fruit of their labor to the locust. 47He killed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore-figs with sleet. 48He abandoned their cattle to the hail and their livestock to bolts of lightning. 49He unleashed His fury against them, wrath, indignation, and calamity— a band of destroying angels. 50He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but delivered their lives to the plague. 51He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham. 52He led out His people like sheep and guided them like a flock in the wilderness. 53He led them safely, so they did not fear, but the sea engulfed their enemies. 54He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had acquired. 55He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents. 56But they tested and disobeyed God Most High, for they did not keep His decrees. 57They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow. 58They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols. 59On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely. 60He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men. 61He delivered His strength to captivity, and His splendor to the hand of the adversary. 62He surrendered His people to the sword because He was enraged by His heritage. 63Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs. 64His priests fell by the sword, but their widows could not lament. 65Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a mighty warrior overcome by wine. 66He beat back His foes; He put them to everlasting shame. 67He rejected the tent of Joseph and refused the tribe of Ephraim. 68But He chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which He loved. 69He built His sanctuary like the heights, like the earth He has established forever. 70He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds; 71from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance. 72So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands. PSALM 78:32–72 · BEREAN STANDARD BIBLE READ PSALM 78

Great God, how oft did Isr'el prove By turns thine anger and thy love! There in a glass our hearts may see How fickle and how false they be. STANZA I

Its place in the book

Watts's psalms run from Psalm 1 to Psalm 150, several settings to many psalms: 367 hymns. This is number 4. Point at a tick to see the hymn; click it to open that hymn.

NO. 4 · ISAAC WATTS · THIS HYMN Great God, how oft did Isr'el prove

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