65 Then the Lord awoke as one that had slept, Like a warrior shouting because of wine. 66 And He beat His adversaries back, He put on them a perpetual reproach. 67 And He loathed the tent of Joseph, And the tribe of Ephraim He did not choose. 68 But He chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which He loved. 69 And He built His sanctuary like [heavenly] heights, Like the earth which He has founded for ever. 70 And He chose David His servant, And took him from the sheepfolds; 71 From following the ewes that give suck, He brought him To feed Jacob His people, And Israel His inheritance. 72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, And with the skilfulness of his hands he guided them. This psalm is closely related to Psalms cv.-cvii. Like them, it treats the history of Israel, and especially the Exodus and wilderness wanderings, for purposes of edification, rebuke, and encouragement. The past is held up as a mirror to the present generation. It has been one long succession of miracles of mercy met by equally continuous ingratitude, which has ever been punished by national calamities. The psalm departs singularly from chronological order. It arranges its contents in two principal masses, each introduced by the same formula (vv. 12, 43) referring to "wonders in Egypt and the field of Zoan." But the first mass has nothing to do with Egypt, but begins with the passage of the Red Sea, and is wholly occupied with the wilderness. The second group of wonders begins in ver. 44 with the plagues of Egypt, touches lightly on the wilderness history, and then passes to the early history of Israel when settled in the land, and finishes with the establishment of David on the throne. It is difficult to account for this singular _bouleversement_ of the history. But the conjecture may be hazarded that its reason lies in the better illustration of continual interlacing of mercy and unthankfulness afforded by the events in the wilderness, than by the plagues of Egypt. That interlacing is the main point on which the psalmist wishes to lay stress, and therefore he begins with the most striking example of it. The use of the formula in ver. 12 looks as if his original intention had been to follow the order of time. Another peculiarity is the prominence given to Ephraim, both in ver. 9 as a type of faithlessness, and in ver. 67 as rejected in favour of Judah. These references naturally point to the date of the psalm as being subsequent to the separation of the kingdoms; but whether it is meant as rebuke to the northern kingdom, or as warning to Judah from the fate of Ephraim, is not clear. Nor are there materials for closer determination of date. The tone of the closing reference to David implies that his accession belongs to somewhat remote times. There are no regular strophes, but a tendency to run into paragraphs of four verses, with occasional irregularities.