Psalms 79

1. O GOD, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled; They have laid Jerusalem on heaps.2 The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, The flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.3 Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; And there was none to bury them.4 We are become a reproach to our neighbours, A scorn and derision to them that are round about us.5 How long, O LORD, wilt thou be angry for ever? Shall thy jealousy burn like fire?6 Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that know thee not, And upon the kingdoms that call not upon thy name.7 For they have devoured Jacob, And laid waste his habitation.8 Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers:Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us For we are brought very low.9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: And deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name’s sake.10 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God? Let the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed Be known among the heathen in our sight.11 Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; According to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to death;12 And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom Their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord.13 So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture Will give thee thanks for ever: We will shew forth thy praise to all generations.

THIS Psalm is a lamentation over the same great national calamity which, as we have already seen, is bewailed in terms so pathetic in the seventy-fourth. The two Psalms have, indeed, some points of difference, as well as of resemblance. The great features in the scene of misery are presented in the two with a different degree of prominence. In the one, the destruction of the temple occupies the foreground; in the other, the terrible carnage which had made the streets of Jerusalem run with blood is the chief subject of lamentation. In the former, the hope of deliverance and triumph breaks out strongly in the very midst of the sorrow and the wailing; in the latter, the tone of sadness prevails throughout, with the exception of the short verse with which the Psalm concludes. There is also a marked difference in style. The seventy-fourth Psalm is abrupt, and sometimes obscure; the seventy-ninth, on the contrary, flows smoothly and easily throughout. But there is the same deep pathos in both Psalms; in both, the same picturesque force of description; both the one and the other may be called, without exaggeration, the funeral anthem of a nation. There can, therefore, be little doubt that both Psalms, even if not written by the same poet, yet bewail the same calamity. It is equally certain that there are but two periods of the national history to which the language of either could properly apply: the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, or the sack of the city by Antiochus Epiphanes. The Psalm consists, first, of a complaint (vs. 1-4), and then of a prayer that God would visit His people again in mercy, and pour out His vengeance upon their enemies (vs. 5-12); while a closing verse announces the gratitude with which God’s mercy will be acknowledged (v. 13). P.

2. Thy servants. Thy saints.** No temporal wrath, no calamities whatsoever can separate the Lord’s children from God’s love and estimation of them, nor untie the relation between God and them; for here, albeit their flesh be devoured by the fowls of heaven and beasts of the earth, yet remain they the Lord’s servants and saints under these sufferings. Dickson.

3. None to bury,** this being, according to the deep-rooted feeling of all ancient nations, a great aggravation of the calamity. P.—These are points of the sorest affliction—the shedding of blood like water round about the holy city; human bodies left unburied to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey, and especially that these slain and unburied men were

God’s servants, His saints. Surely God will hear such plaints of sorrow from His surviving people.

4. The poets and prophets of Israel, jealous for the honor of God before the world, felt this point most keenly—the reproach brought on God’s chosen people, and by implication upon their God, when their heathen enemies were victorious over them. (See Lam. 5:1 and 2:15, 16 and Ezra 9:6, 7.) C.

6. “Pour out,” etc. The ground of his prayer is not only that they have not called upon God’s name, but that they have devoured Jacob. Hence he asks for a righteous retribution. Precisely in the same spirit Habakkuk long before had said of the Chaldeans, “O Jehovah, for judgment Thou hast ordained them, and, O Thou Rock, for correction Thou hast appointed them.” P.

8. As is evident from v. 9, the poet does not mean that the present generation, itself innocent, has to pay the penalty of the guilt of the fathers (on the contrary, Deut. 24:16; 2 Kings 14:6; Ezek. 18:20); he prays as one of those who have turned from the sins of the fathers, and who can now no longer think of themselves as placed under wrath, but under sin-pardoning and redeeming grace. D.—Scripture nowhere teaches that a man is guilty in the sight of God for any sins but his own. Sinning himself, he allows the deeds of his fathers; he is a partaker in their iniquities; he helps to swell the fearful catalogue of guilt which at last brings down God’s judgment; but his condemnation, if he be condemned, is for his own transgression, not for those of his fathers. P.

9. God of our salvation.** If human reason were to judge of the many and great blows wherewith God so often smote and wasted His people, it would call God not the Saviour of the people, but the destroyer and oppressor. But the faith of the prophet judges far otherwise of God, and sees even in an angry and pursuing God the salvation of His people. The gods of the nations, though they do not afflict even in temporal things, are gods not of the salvation of their worshippers, but of their perdition. But our God, even when He is most severely angry and smites, is not the God of destruction, but of salvation. Musculus.

For Thy name’s sake. Twice the appeal is made “for Thy name’s sake,” that revelation of God which He had made of Himself to Moses when He passed by and proclaimed the name of Jehovah (Ex. 24:6, 7). P.—The choicest mercies God’s people have are for His name’s sake; they have pardon of sin for His name’s sake (Psalm 25 : 11) ; purging of sin for His name’s sake (79 : 9) ; leading in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (23 : 2) ; quickening of their dead and dull hearts for His name’s sake (143 : 11). Though His people offend Him, yet He forsakes them not, for His great name’s sake. W. Greenhill.

10. This argument in favor of God’s interposition, founded on the false conclusions which His enemies would draw from His refusal, is of frequent occurrence in the Pentateuch. Where is their God, the invisible, spiritual being whom they worship, but who cannot save them from external dangers? Or the meaning may be, where is the proof of that almighty power, and that love for His own people, of which they have so often and so loudly boasted? A.

11. If any of you walk in sighs and sorrow before God, He takes these sighs as applications to Him for relief. Your misery, vented even in a sigh, is a declaration of your need. There are times when you cannot enter into long confessions; when the spirit is so weary that you feel that you cannot speak. Much might at such a season be spoken by a sigh; pour it forth, and it will reach the throne. And here it will prove to be not only an unexpressed declaration of your state, but also an unexpressed wish for deliverance therefrom; and it will be heard by God. P. B. Power.

Entering the inhabited part of the old city, and winding through some crooked, filthy lanes, I suddenly found myself on turning a sharp corner in a spot of singular interest—the “Jews’ place of Wailing.” It is a small paved quadrangle; on one side are the backs of low modern houses, without door or window; on the other is the lofty wall of the Haram, of recent date above, but having below five courses of bevelled stones in a perfect state of preservation. Here the Jews are permitted to approach the sacred inclosure, and wail over the fallen temple, whose very dust is dear to them, and in whose stones they still take pleasure (Psalm 102 : 14). It was Friday, and a crowd of miserable devotees had assembled—men and women of all ages and all nations, dressed in the quaint costumes of every country of Europe and Asia. Old men were there—pale, haggard, careworn men, tottering on pilgrim staves; and little girls with white faces and lustrous black eyes, gazing wistfully now at their parents, now at the old wall. Some were on their knees chanting mournfully from a book of Hebrew prayers, swaying their bodies to and fro; some were prostrate on the ground, pressing forehead and lips to the earth; some were close to the wall, burying their faces in the rents and crannies of the old stones; some were kissing them, some had their arms spread out as if they would clasp them to their bosoms, some were bathing them with tears, and all the while sobbing as if their hearts would burst. It was a sad and touching spectacle. Eighteen centuries of exile and woe have not dulled their hearts’ affections, or deadened their feelings of devotion. Here we see them assembled from the ends of the earth, poor, despised, down-trodden outcasts—amid the desolations of their fatherland, beside the dishonored ruins of their ancient sanctuary—chanting, now in accents of deep pathos, and now of wild woe, the prophetic words of their own Psalmist, “O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled. We are become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. How long, Lord? wilt Thou be angry forever?” J. L. Porter.