Ps. 78.67 (rejection and recreation)

And he repudiated / the tent of Joseph
and no longer chose / the tribe of Ephraim. 

The internal flood. This verse continues the act of ‘cleansing’ in the previous verse. As if in a single movement of negating obstructions in his way God now acts internally to Israel in two acts of repudiation. It is important to see God’s act here as in continuity with his act ‘toward the foe’. Both externally and internally there are significant obstacles to God’s design for Israel, so significant in fact that they must be decisively dealt with. This ‘repudiating’ within Israel is in line with the ‘eternal reproach’ of the foes in that it signals an end-point. No longer will God ‘use the foe’ (as he did in vs. 61) and likewise no longer will he use Joseph and Ephraim. We could liken this to God’s ‘repudiating’ or rejecting of Saul in favor of David—it is a decisive and irrevocable ‘turning away’. It is the preamble to the new, rather than an attempt to bind up the cycle that went before. The significance of Ephraim. The mention of the rejection of Ephraim is important in the context of this psalm. We saw how the original act of rebellion was sourced in the “sons of Ephraim…” (vs. 9). As we saw there, there was an odd theological chronology at work whereby the sons who came later were put first. We observed that what this accomplished for the psalm was a ‘tainting’ of the entire line of descendants. They were all ‘sons of Ephraim’ and, hence, ‘sons of rebellion’. This played out in the remainder of the psalm as a cyclical act of blessing on God’s part, met with an astounding act of rebellion on Israel’s part, followed by a curse, followed not by a repentance but a further entrenched rebellion. Now, we come to the almost literal ‘end of the line’. The ‘choosing of Ephraim’ will be removed and given to another. In order to end the downward spiral into chaos, and save his people, God repudiates Ephraim, cutting them off from his choosing like an infected branch from a tree. This is why their repudiation must be seen in continuity with the ‘eternal reproach’ of the foe: God is removing the cancer from within Israel by taking back to himself his election of Ephraim and will start again, now with ‘the tribe of Judah’ (i.e., with David). Their repudiation is not simply an act of judgment (I don’t think is such a thing). It is the necessary precursor to God’s giving of his ‘choice’ to another tribe in order to accomplish a new act of creation. In order to save Israel, he must reject Ephraim and choose another. This portion of Israel’s history is coming to an end.