A teaching poem retells rebellion and mercy: Teaching the next generation

A parable of old things is opened so children will hear more than family gossip

Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old: which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. The teaching poem announces itself as mashal and riddle, not as a court transcript.

We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children.

The aim is hope and commandment, not a sneer at the parents

That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God. The warning is real. It is also in-house: Israel teaching Israel. The retelling that follows is selected interpretation, not a neutral chronology, not an anti-Jewish caricature, and not permission to shame living descendants for ancestral failure.