Confession retells rebellion and persistent mercy: Refusal, Baal-peor, and Meribah

The pleasant land is despised, and a hand is lifted toward wilderness overthrow and later scattering

Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word: but murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the LORD. Therefore he lifted up his hand against them, to overthrow them in the wilderness: to overthrow their seed also among the nations, and to scatter them in the lands.

Refusal of the land and tent murmuring remember the spy generation. Scattering among nations reaches beyond the wilderness toward exile. The singers are interpreting their own displacement. Outsiders do not get to preach this as proof that Israel should remain scattered or as a curse to repeat.

Baal-peor, Phinehas, and Meribah stay inside the family account, including Moses' rash mouth

They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them. Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed. And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore. They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes: because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.

Baal-peor and sacrifices of the dead are named as joining and plague. Phinehas staying the plague is this psalm's memory of zeal counted as righteousness; it is not a standing warrant for later violence. Waters of strife make Moses himself a casualty of provoked spirit and unadvised speech. A confession that includes Moses' failure cannot be an antisemitic cartoon of a corrupt people. It is Israel telling the truth on itself, leaders included.