Ps. 78.10--11 (a litany of failure)

They did not / keep the covenant of God
and refused / to obey his instruction.
They forgot / his deeds
and his wonders / that he had shown them. 

If we track the progression of these “sons of Eprhaim” we find an increasing downward spiral of disobedience: “turned back”—did not keep covenant—refused to obey torah—forgot deeds and wonders. This movement is crucial to see as it directly tracks the opening lines and how obedience and confidence are achieved. There, we saw how the ‘wonders’ led to ‘instruction/torah’ which led to keeping of the commandments and confidence. Here, confidence waivers, they refuse to obey and then they ‘forget’. Now, I do not believe that this is a type of chronology of events. The point, rather, is that the psalmist is showing in a literary way how these “sons of Ephraim” have come to embody the almost total reversal of the faithful ‘passing on’ of the opening verses—they are the form of rebellion from beginning to end.  Likewise, their rebellion finds its root in both the active form of refusal to obey as well as the seemingly passive form of ‘forgetting’. As we saw in the opening, one cannot obey the Torah of God if they are not ‘encased in the wonders of God’. To forget the wonders is to be unable to obey. It is therefore probably a misleading characterization to term it ‘passive’. This type of ‘forgetting’ does not strike me as absentmindedness, but rather the type of (non)attention the psalmist in the opening verse is attempting to avoid—mere knowledge without perception, without active engagement and comprehension.  This type of ‘forgetting’ is analogous to the type of “turning back on the day of battle”—it approaches the decisive event only to turn back at the moment of decision; it does not complete the required momentum and turns back in failure and disobedience. I believe this is why all of these failed actions can be seen to occur at once: “turning back”, not keeping covenant, refusing to obey and forgetting. A final point to note in this litany of woes is the failure to keep covenant. This failure is tremendous—it signals not merely failure but betrayal. For a covenant partner to fail in his obligations at the decisive moment when the covenant bond should be strongest is, in effect, a supreme act of betrayal. Although the “sons of Ephraim” may not have ceded ranks and joined with the opposing forces, their failure to adhere to the covenant functionally places them in that position. Further, it introduces a massive disruption into the people of God, almost virus-like. The family line has been deeply wounded because the family line derives its stability from the covenant that made them the ‘family of God’, the kinsman of God. We see this in the narration of salvation history and will see it in this psalm in particular: the response to this form of disobedience must be severe so as to prevent the spreading of the virus of disobedience. It is a particularly virulent form of chaos that seeks entrance into God’s family (and kingdom). It must be pruned, and cut-off.