Ps. 78.12 (from father to son)

In front / of their fathers / he did a wonder
in the land of Egypt / in the region of Zoan. 

This verse is very deceptive. It arguable is one of the three most important in the psalm. The reason is two-fold: 1) it describes the relation of the generations to the event of God; 2) it signals the interruption in the family of God. As to the generation’s relation to the event. It is key to note that in the immediately preceding verse the failure of the “sons of Ephraim” is described as their forgetting wonders he had shown them. Here, however, that ‘showing’ is not to them but to their fathers. It is “in front of them” that the exodus event occurred. This is crucial because it is our general assumption that the passage of time in a story’s transmission is that story’s perversion. There is absolutely no sense of that here. If the father’s saw the event, the son’s see the event. The story, quite literally, passes down the event from father to son so effectively that the psalmist will equate the father’s seeing with the son’s. Again, the problem is not the passage of time—the ‘passing on’ of the story counters this—the problem is the failure to actively perceive what is contained in the story. As we will see, the ‘fathers’ who saw the event will fail in almost precisely the same manner as the sons. The ability to literally see the event, in and of itself is of no benefit, just as the mere hearing of the story is of no benefit. Without comprehension and active engagement, disobedience will result. At the same time, however, (and this is key)—to actively engage the story is the same as witnessing the event itself. Remembrance (in the sense of comprehension) really makes present the act remembered (“Do this in memory of me…”); memory and sacrament are intimately wed. As to the second point I think a modification is needed. The family of God, according to this psalm, was almost conceived in rebellion. We will come to see, as we already noted, that the fathers are no better than the sons even though they witnessed God’s saving act. Like Adam, their genesis is one which almost immediately results in rebellion—directly in the face of an overwhelming wonder of God (Adam: the wonder of creation; in Exodus: …the exodus). This rebellion, however, is leading to an end-point as we will see—the establishment of David. In David, the psalm suggests, the family finally receives its real ‘father’ (by him being the real ‘son of God’; ps. 2). It is only then this genesis of rebellion will finally be able to recover—when the comprehension necessary in memory will find its proper stage.