And delivered up his people unto the sword, and was very wroth with his inheritance
Psalm 78 retells Israel's story: God kept showing kindness, and the people kept rebelling. Here His anger falls on Israel itself, not on Israel's enemies. Two things make the words hard. God hands the sword to the enemy, and the people it strikes are the portion He calls His own.
Israel called the land God gave them their inheritance. Commentators note that God uses the same word of the people themselves.
The Bible again and again calls the land of promise the inheritance of Israel. God gave them that land flowing with milk and honey. Deut. 4:21; Ps. 105:11, etc. ... Along with this, God calls Israel His inheritance: He has chosen them for His own inheritance. Ps. 33:12; Ps. 78:62, etc.
So the shock is deliberate. His anger falls on what belongs to Him.
One writer traces the sequence: idolatry, then the abandoned sanctuary, then the people struck down.
When Israel openly practised idolatry, God's fury woke. So we read the terrible words: He "utterly rejected Israel," and He left the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent where He had set His name (vv. 59-60). Until then His strength had shown itself in His power on Israel's behalf. Now He handed that strength over to captivity (v. 61), and gave Israel, His glory, into the enemy's hand. Of course, this refers to the captivity of Israel and Judah at the end of the history of the kings. At this time He gave His people over to the sword. They suffered terribly at the hands of their enemies, because God was furious with His own inheritance (v. 62).
Commentators differ on which disaster the psalm has in view. Some read it of the captivity at the end of the kings. Others tie it to the day the Philistines captured the ark.
One writer presses a further cause: evil among God's people that nobody judged. Eli failed here as much as the nation did.
"If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged by the Lord." Israel failed to give glory to God in this way, and so did Eli. That is why God had to defend His own glory, as we have seen. He defended it by handing it over to the enemy. ... These are the terrible results of evil left unjudged in the house of God, and among His people.
Israel carried the ark into battle expecting it to work for them. One writer explains why God let the enemy take it.
Israel hoped the Philistines would be defeated, and the Philistines feared it. The opposite happened. ... Do you know why that was? God will have reality. Did Israel think the ark, the outward pledge of God's presence, could support them while they stayed in their sin? Then they were badly mistaken. God will be no party to what is not true and real. So He says, "I will let my ark go."
Losing the ark might have been shrugged off if daily life had stayed comfortable. One commentator reads the sword of this verse as God refusing to let the loss go unfelt — and finds ownership inside the blow.
If everything else went well, a man might hardly feel the loss of his great treasure. But God will not leave them like that, so chastening they could feel had to follow. So in the very act of owning that in the thoughts of His heart they were still His people, He handed them over to the sword.
The verse is not the end of the account. The arrangement that tested Israel ends here. What follows is something God begins Himself.
God had governed them under law, under testimony, and with compassionate mercy. On that ground Israel was given up completely: the tabernacle left, the ark handed over to captivity and to the enemy. The people too were given over to judgment. But the Lord's love to His people in grace was not weakened. The sorrow they came into called out that love.
The psalm then names the instrument of that love. God chose David, when the nation had nothing left to claim:
It was an extraordinary display of His grace, at a time when the whole nation had turned away from God and forfeited and lost everything. ... The Philistines had carried the ark away captive. But "He chose David also, His servant." Through him God turned back the tide of disaster, and there was safety, food, and guidance for His people.
- His own. God calls Israel His inheritance. The anger here falls on what belongs to Him. It is severe because the bond is real.
- The cause. Idolatry in the land, and evil in God's house that nobody judged, woke the anger. Had they judged themselves, the Lord would not have judged them.
- No shelter. The ark could not cover an unreal condition. God will have reality, so He let the pledge of His presence be carried off rather than back a lie.
- The proof. He struck instead of walking away. The sword was chastening, and chastening means that in His heart they were still His people.
- The outcome. The ruin did not weaken His love. Their sorrow drew it out, and He chose David. Grace starts again where everything has been lost.
The fire consumed their young men, and their maidens were not praised in [nuptial] song;
Psalm 78 retells Israel's story so the next generation would not repeat it, and this verse sits at its darkest point: Shiloh is abandoned, the ark is in enemy hands, and now the judgment reaches the nation's young. Why would God strike His own people at the very point where their future lay?
Older translations read "their maidens were not given to marriage" — the young women were left unwed.
This was not random destruction. One writer calls the fire God's own anger, and the unwed young women its direct result:
Sadly, if all else went well, man might hardly feel the loss of his great treasure. But God will not give them up to that, so chastening they could feel had to follow. Even as He acknowledged that in the thoughts of His heart they were still His people, He gave them up to the sword. The fire of His anger consumed their young men, so the young women went unwed.
Comfortable circumstances would have let Israel shrug off the loss of God's presence. The blow falls because He refuses to leave them numb.
Another writer notes the reversal: the men who should have defended the nation are the ones destroyed.
Fire consumed their young men, who should have been protecting the nation, and left the young women without hope of marriage.
Why did God allow it? One writer finds the answer in Israel's trust in the ark while their own state was sinful:
Israel hoped the Philistines would be defeated, and the Philistines themselves feared it. The very opposite happened. As a Psalm says, God "forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men; and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hand" (Ps. 78:60, 61). Do you know why that was? God will have reality. The Ark was the outward pledge of God's presence. But if Israel thought it could or would support them in their sinful state, they were greatly mistaken. God will be no party to what is not true and real, so He says, I will let my ark go.
The fire in this verse presses the same principle further: God will not prop up a relationship His people treat as a formality.
This was not one isolated disaster. With the sanctuary gone and the ark taken, nothing outwardly marked Israel as God's people:
So God had departed from Israel in every visible sign of relationship. As the dying wife of Phinehas declared, Ichabod was written over the whole nation. Every formal link was broken. God might still speak through a prophet, and in fact He did. That rested on a grace which was sovereign with Him — His own unchallengeable right, to use whenever He chose. But the established order of things was finished.
(Ichabod means "no glory" — the name Phinehas' dying wife spoke when the enemy took the ark.)
The psalm exists to pass truth on to children, which makes the loss of a generation sharper still. One writer traces its shape:
There was not only a redemption long ago, which faith looked back to. There was also a testimony given, and a law to guide Israel's ways, which they were to make known to their children. But the fathers had been a stubborn and rebellious generation. God gave the law and the testimony so that the children would not be like their fathers. But they were like them, and their history is set out here. So God chastened them; there was direct, open government over their ways.
The psalm does not end in the ashes. Commentators read the collapse as the background for what God does next, out of Himself alone:
Sovereign grace is God's only resource, if He is to bless man. All His dealings, however gracious, fail of their aim. If He acted on the results of His dealings, He would give them up. But when everything was at its worst, He wakes in His love to His people, because of their misery and His love for them.
Man's complete ruin makes way for God to show His love and power for His people. But if God steps in for a people who have ruined themselves beyond hope, it cannot rest on what they are for God. It rests entirely on what God is for them.
- Cause — Israel leaned on the ark while living in sin. "God will have reality," so He would not back what was not true.
- Consequence — fire took the young men, the nation's defence, and left the young women with no marriage. The future itself was gone.
- Purpose — God struck while still owning them as His people. Comfort would have let them feel nothing.
- Extent — every formal link broke, and Ichabod, "no glory," stood over the nation. Only sovereign grace still spoke, through a prophet.
- Outcome — ruin made room for grace. At the worst moment He woke in love, and blessing rests on what God is for His people, not what they are for Him.
Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.
Psalm 78 retells Israel's story: God carried, fed and rescued this people, and they still ended up with a captured ark and dead priests. This verse is the low point, and it raises two questions — why did God let His own priests die, and why did their widows not weep?
The verse looks back to the collapse at Shiloh. There the Philistines, Israel's neighbours and enemies, defeated Israel and seized the ark — the gold-covered chest that marked God's presence among His people. One writer sets out the whole chain of loss:
Meanwhile, the ruin is complete. The Philistines come up against Israel and strike them. In their superstition they send for the ark of God to deliver them — the ark of the covenant they had so often broken! They are struck down again. Hophni and Phinehas are killed, and the ark is taken. Eli falls backward at the news and breaks his neck. As she dies, Phinehas' wife gives her son a name that expresses the people's terrible condition. "And she named the child Ichabod, saying, 'The glory has departed from Israel.'" The priesthood, as the link between God and Israel, had come to its final end.
One writer sets the sword beside the loss of the sanctuary. God would not let Israel lose Him and feel nothing:
Shiloh is given up, and the tent He had pitched among men in wonderful loving-kindness... If everything else had gone well, a person might hardly feel the loss of his great treasure. But God will not leave them like that, so chastening they could actually feel had to follow. In the very act of owning that in the thoughts of His heart they were still His people, He handed them over to the sword. The fire of His anger consumed their young men, so the young women never married. Their priests also fell by the sword, which left the sanctuary twice desolate. Their widows were silent with a grief that went beyond the grief of widowhood.
Commentators differ on both the date and the reason. One puts the verse in the much later captivity, and traces the silence to a conscience that had stopped feeling God's hand:
Of course, this refers to the captivity of Israel and Judah at the end of the history of the kings... Their priests too fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation. This was because the people had become so insensitive to God's dealings that they could no longer think clearly (vv. 63-64). Terrible affliction!
Another writer finds the despair too deep to come from the death of Eli's two sons alone. He blames King Saul, who set Doeg the Edomite on the priests:
The last lines reveal such a state of despair in those who were once the most honoured in the nation that we cannot think they refer only to the death of Hophni and Phinehas. Saul was surely the author of this crowning disaster... Doeg had stirred up his worst passions. Saul summoned Ahimelech the priest and all his father's house before him on a charge of conspiring with David. He ordered this Edomite to fall upon them, "who killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod." That was not all. Saul had spared Agag, king of the Amalekites, against God's express command. Now he gave the whole city of the priests to the sword... This unexpected, crushing blow fell without pity on hearts already broken by the killing of their husbands. It turned their sorrow to despair. They made no lamentation!
None of this came without warning. God had already spoken against Eli's household, and the fallen priests are that word coming true:
How literally the solemn words of judgment on Eli's house came true (1 Sam. 2:31-33; 1 Sam. 22:17-19; 1 Kings 2:27). Yet the Lord Himself would bring their deliverance, as He carried out His purposes: royalty in David, and worship in the temple built by David's son.
The priests were the appointed link to God, so their death closed an era. What follows in the psalm is not a fresh test of Israel:
This is the end, in fact, of the legal covenant, in one important aspect of it. The people had failed under it as first given — they failed completely at Sinai itself. Priesthood was then a resource... they were put under law a second time, in the hands of a mediator: first Moses, then the family of Aaron. Now these too had completely failed, and all was gone once more... Man is "flesh," and with man in the flesh this is the end. David does follow in this psalm, but this is not presented as a new trial. David is only the expression of a grace in God — a grace that will need Another to show it properly. But the grace is here.
- Ruin. Shiloh fell: the ark captured, Eli dead, and "the priesthood, as the link between God and Israel," at "its final end."
- Silence. Commentators read the widows' silence two ways: consciences too numb to "think clearly," or sorrow crushed into despair.
- Sentence. The priests' death was no accident. God's judgment on Eli's house came true to the letter.
- End. Law failed, then priesthood failed. With "man in the flesh" there was nothing left to build on.
- Grace. At the lowest point the Lord Himself brings deliverance — royalty in David, and worship in the temple built by David's son. Grace, not a new trial.