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How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness! How often they caused him grief in the desert!
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Again and again they tested God, and they pushed the Holy One of Israel to the limit.
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They did not remember his power-- the day he freed them from their oppressor,
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when he performed his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders in the fields of Zoan.
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He turned their rivers into blood so that they could not drink from their streams.
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He sent a swarm of flies that bit them and frogs that ruined them.
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He gave their crops to grasshoppers and their produce to locusts.
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He killed their vines with hail and their fig trees with frost.
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He let the hail strike their cattle and bolts of lightning strike their livestock.
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He sent his burning anger, rage, fury, and hostility against them. He sent an army of destroying angels.
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He cleared a path for his anger. He did not spare them. He let the plague take their lives.
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He slaughtered every firstborn in Egypt, the ones born in the tents of Ham when their fathers were young.
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But he led his own people out like sheep and guided them like a flock through the wilderness.
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He led them safely. They had no fear while the sea covered their enemies.
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He brought them into his holy land, to this mountain that his power had won.
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He forced nations out of their way and gave them the land of the nations as their inheritance. He settled the tribes of Israel in their own tents.
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They tested God Most High and rebelled against him. They did not obey his written instructions.
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They were disloyal and treacherous like their ancestors. They were like arrows shot from a defective bow.
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They made him angry because of their illegal worship sites. They made him furious because they worshiped idols.
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When God heard, he became furious. He completely rejected Israel.
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He abandoned his dwelling place in Shiloh, the tent where he had lived among humans.
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He allowed his power to be taken captive and handed his glory over to an oppressor.
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He let swords kill his people. He was furious with those who belonged to him.
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Fire consumed his best young men, so his virgins heard no wedding songs.
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His priests were cut down with swords. The widows [of his priests] could not even weep [for them].
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Then the Lord woke up like one who had been sleeping, like a warrior sobering up from [too much] wine.
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He struck his enemies from behind and disgraced them forever.
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He rejected the tent of Joseph. He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
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but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved.
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He built his holy place to be like the high heavens, like the earth which he made to last for a long time.
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He chose his servant David. He took him from the sheep pens.
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He brought him from tending the ewes that had lambs so that David could be the shepherd of the people of Jacob, of Israel, the people who belonged to the LORD.
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With unselfish devotion David became their shepherd. With skill he guided them.