A teaching poem retells rebellion and mercy: Ephraim's failure and wilderness wonders

Armed Ephraim becomes the poem's first picture of forgotten covenant

The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law; and forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them. Weapons are named so that the failure is not blamed on lack of gear.

Ephraim here is a tribe in Israel's story used as a teaching example. The lines are not a slur on later northern people, Samaritans, or any modern group. Forgetting wonders, not missing arrows, is the charge.

Egypt and Zoan are recalled as public wonders already given

Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap. In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.

He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers. Zoan locates the wonders in a named Egyptian field. Sea-heap, cloud, fire, and rock-water are the inherited signs the armed generation forgot. The unit teaches memory of gift, not a travelogue and not a conquest plan.