Psalms 78:34–39

Psalms 78:34 — "When he killed them, then they inquired after him." The verb dārash ("inquired after" or "sought") carries a weight of religious seriousness in Hebrew — it is the language of pilgrimage, liturgical consultation, and urgent prayer. The devastating irony the Psalmist exposes is that this seeking is causally linked not to gratitude or love but to divine punishment. Only when God killed them — when plague, serpent, or enemy sword thinned their ranks — did Israel turn back. The searching is reactive, not freely offered. This sets the psychological portrait for the entire cluster: a religion driven by fear of consequence rather than love of God. The narrative the Psalmist draws on covers the wilderness episodes of Numbers and Exodus, particularly the cycles of rebellion, punishment, and temporary chastening described in Numbers 21 and related passages.

Psalms 78:35 — "They remembered that God was their rock." The remembrance (zākar) here is explicitly theological — they recalled the titles and saving history of YHWH. "Rock" (ṣûr) is a classic divine epithet in the Psalter and in Deuteronomy (Deut 32:4, 15, 18), evoking stability, refuge, and the source of life-giving water in the desert. "Most High" (ʿElyôn) stresses God's sovereign transcendence. The Psalmist acknowledges that the content of their remembered theology was correct — they knew who God was. This is crucial: their failure was not intellectual but volitional and affective. They confessed orthodox doctrine with cold hearts, a condition that anticipates Christ's quotation of Isaiah: "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me" (Matt 15:8).

Psalms 78:36 — "But they flattered him with their mouth." The Hebrew root pātāh ("flattered" or "beguiled") can mean to entice or seduce — it is the language of deception and manipulation. They tried, in effect, to manage God with words, to pacify divine wrath through the performance of piety without genuine inner transformation. Their tongue (lāšôn) was smooth but their intention corrupt. The Psalmist here dissects what Catholic tradition will later name the sin of sacrilege when applied to the sacraments: the external sign presented without the interior disposition. St. Augustine, commenting on such passages, distinguishes between confessio laudis (true confession of praise arising from love) and words that are merely strategic — a kind of spiritual bargaining.

Psalms 78:37 — "For their heart was not right with him." This is the diagnostic center of the cluster. The Hebrew nākôn ("right" or "steadfast") describes what is established, firm, and reliable. Their heart (lēb, the seat of will, intellect, and affection in Hebrew anthropology) was fundamentally unstable — it had not been given to God. They were neither faithful to His covenant — berîtô, covenant, the formal relationship of sworn mutual fidelity — and the verse closes with the damning summary: they were not faithful (ne'emānû, from ʾāman, the root of "amen"). Their very "amens" were empty. This verse provides the theological hinge of the passage: the external piety of vv. 34–36 is here exposed as covenantally hollow.

Psalms 78:38 — "But he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn't destroy them." The adversative wəhûʾ ("But he") is one of Scripture's most arresting pivots. Everything changes subject. After three verses cataloguing human failure, the Psalmist turns to the divine response — and it is pure mercy. Raḥûm ("merciful") shares its root with reḥem, the womb — it is a visceral, maternal compassion. God kippēr — "atoned for" or "covered" iniquity — the same root used in the sacrificial system for the expiation of sin. He turned away His anger (ʾap) repeatedly. The Psalmist emphasizes divine restraint: God stirred up all His wrath but did not pour it out. This is forbearance as an act of sovereign will, not weakness. He forgave not because the repentance was adequate, but because His nature is mercy.

Psalms 78:39 — "He remembered that they were but flesh." The theological capstone. God's mercy is grounded in His knowledge of human creatureliness. Bāśār ("flesh") in Hebrew connotes not merely physicality but mortality, vulnerability, and the tendency toward corruption — the creaturely as opposed to the divine. "A wind that passes and does not return" is an image of utter transience, echoing Psalm 103:14–16. God the Creator does not forget what He has made. His mercy is not naïve — He is under no illusion about human inconstancy — but it is proportionate to His understanding of our condition. This is not an excuse for sin but an expression of the divine condescension that will reach its fullness in the Incarnation, when God takes on the very flesh He here remembers with compassion.

From a Catholic perspective, this passage illuminates the Church's understanding of both authentic contrition and divine mercy with remarkable precision.

The Catholic tradition distinguishes between attrition (imperfect contrition, arising from fear of punishment or hatred of sin's ugliness) and contrition (perfect contrition, arising from love of God). The Israelites of Psalm 78:34–37 embody a form of religious response that falls short even of attrition rightly ordered — it is not genuine sorrow for sin at all, but rather a pragmatic turning to God as a means of escaping death. The Council of Trent (Session XIV) affirms that while attrition suffices for the Sacrament of Penance when joined to absolution, a merely performative religion without any true interior movement is no repentance at all. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1451–1452) echoes this: contrition must involve "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed."

Yet the towering theological marvel of verse 38 is that God forgives anyway — not because the human response was adequate, but out of the sheer abundance of divine mercy. This anticipates the Church's teaching that God's mercy is not conditioned by human deserving (CCC §1846: "The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God's mercy to sinners"). St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, I, q.21, a.3) identifies mercy as the greatest of God's external attributes precisely because it overflows beyond what justice requires.

The Fathers recognized in verse 38 a proto-Gospel moment. St. John Chrysostom saw in God's repeated forbearance a foreshadowing of Christ's atoning sacrifice — the kippēr (atonement) of the wilderness becomes the perfect expiation of Calvary. St. Augustine (Confessions, Book I) meditates on God's compassion for creaturely weakness as the very foundation of the spiritual life: we return to Him broken, and He meets our poverty with inexhaustible wealth. Pope Francis, in Misericordiae Vultus (§9), quotes the "womb-like" quality of divine mercy (raḥûm) as the revealed face of the Father, ultimately made visible in the Son.

Psalm 78:34–39 confronts the contemporary Catholic with an uncomfortable question: Is my religious practice driven by love or by fear of consequence? Many Catholics approach prayer, Mass, and the sacraments more intensely during illness, loss, or crisis — precisely the pattern the Psalmist diagnoses. This is not necessarily inauthentic, but the passage warns that crisis-conversion that evaporates once danger passes is a kind of spiritual flattery of God, a transaction rather than a relationship.

Practically, this passage invites an examination of conscience before Confession: Am I bringing God genuine sorrow, or merely a desire to feel relieved? Is my heart "steadfast" (nākôn) in covenant fidelity, or do I drift back into old patterns the moment life eases?

Yet the passage equally forbids despair. God's response to hollow repentance is not contempt but forbearance — He remembers we are flesh, and He works through our weakness. The Catholic is encouraged to bring even imperfect sorrow to the confessional, trusting that the sacrament — unlike Israel's unaided flattery — supplies through Christ's merits what the human heart cannot generate alone. Our poverty of contrition is not the final word; God's mercy is.