36. But all they gave him was lip service;they lied to him with their tongues.
37. Their hearts were not loyal to him.They did not keep his covenant.
38. Yet he was merciful and forgave their sinsand did not destroy them all.Many times he held back his angerand did not unleash his fury!
39. For he remembered that they were merely mortal,gone like a breath of wind that never returns.
40. Oh, how often they rebelled against him in the wildernessand grieved his heart in that dry wasteland.
41. Again and again they tested God’s patienceand provoked the Holy One of Israel.
42. They did not remember his powerand how he rescued them from their enemies.
43. They did not remember his miraculous signs in Egypt,his wonders on the plain of Zoan.
44. For he turned their rivers into blood,so no one could drink from the streams.
45. He sent vast swarms of flies to consume themand hordes of frogs to ruin them.
46. He gave their crops to caterpillars;their harvest was consumed by locusts.
47. He destroyed their grapevines with hailand shattered their sycamore-figs with sleet.
48. He abandoned their cattle to the hail,their livestock to bolts of lightning.