Psalms 79: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a public prayer after an enemy army has overrun Jerusalem: the temple is defiled, the city is rubble, and the dead lie unburied while neighboring peoples mock the survivors. The psalm asks how long God's anger will last, and asks him to turn his anger instead on the nations that do not know him. It also asks God to forgive the people's past sins, to spare the prisoners under sentence of death, and to pay back the insults aimed at him sevenfold. It closes with a promise that the people will thank God and tell of his praise to every generation.

Claim by Claim

1. 79:1
   • The psalm is ascribed to Asaph.
   • The speaker addresses God.
   • Nations have entered God's inheritance.
   • They have defiled God's holy temple.
   • They have reduced Jerusalem to heaps of ruins.
2. 79:2
   • They have given the corpses of God's servants as food to the birds of the sky.
   • They have given the flesh of God's faithful ones to the wild animals of the earth.
3. 79:3
   • They have poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem.
   • There is no one to bury the dead.
4. 79:4
   • We have become an object of reproach to our neighbors.
   • We have become an object of mockery and derision to those around us.
5. 79:5
   • The speaker asks how long the LORD will be angry.
   • The speaker asks whether God's anger will last forever.
   • The speaker asks whether God's jealousy will burn like fire.
6. 79:6
   • The speaker asks God to pour out his wrath on the nations that have not known him.
   • The speaker asks God to pour out his wrath on the kingdoms that have not called on his name.
7. 79:7
   • They have devoured Jacob.
   • They have laid waste Jacob's dwelling place.
8. 79:8
   • The speaker asks God not to hold former iniquities against them.
   • It is ambiguous whether the iniquities are earlier sins or the sins of earlier generations.
   • The speaker asks that God's compassion come quickly to meet them.
   • The speaker states that they have been brought very low.
9. 79:9
   • The speaker asks God to help them.
   • The speaker calls God the God of our salvation.
   • The speaker asks for help for the sake of the glory of God's name.
   • The speaker asks God to deliver them.
   • The speaker asks God to atone for their sins.
   • The speaker asks this for the sake of God's name.
10. 79:10
    • The speaker asks why the nations should say, 'Where is their God?'
    • The speaker asks that vengeance for the poured-out blood of God's servants be made known among the nations before their eyes.
    • It is ambiguous whether what is to be made known is God himself or the vengeance.
11. 79:11
    • The speaker asks that the groaning of the prisoner come before God.
    • The speaker asks God to preserve those condemned to die, according to the greatness of his arm.
12. 79:12
    • The speaker asks God to repay their neighbors sevenfold into their bosom.
    • What is to be repaid is the reproach with which the neighbors reproached God.
    • The speaker addresses God as Lord.
13. 79:13
    • The speakers are God's people.
    • The speakers are the sheep of God's pasture.
    • The speakers will give thanks to God forever.
    • The speakers will declare God's praise to all generations.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

79:1

"Heathen" in the King James simply means "the nations", foreign peoples, not people with a particular religious attitude. "Thine inheritance" is the land of Israel, spoken of as a family estate God had handed on to his people. The description fits the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem and burning of the temple in 587/586 BC, though the psalm never names the invader. "Defiled" is ritual language: the building has been made unfit for worship by the presence of outsiders, blood, and violence, not merely dirtied.

79:2

"Saints" in 1611 English meant those set apart or loyal to God, the word carries no sense of officially canonized holy people. Leaving the dead unburied for scavengers was the deepest disgrace an ancient Near Eastern people could suffer, and it appears in treaties of the period as a standard curse on those who break their word.

79:3

"There was none to bury them" is the sharpest line in the section. Burial was a duty owed to the dead by family, and a body left in the open was considered shamed. Either everyone who would have done the burying was dead or deported, or the survivors were forbidden to do it.

79:4

Honor and shame were public, measurable things in this culture. To be "a reproach" to the neighboring peoples is not hurt feelings but a loss of standing that affected whether a nation could trade, make treaties, or be taken seriously at all.

79:5

"Jealousy" here translates a Hebrew word meaning fierce protective passion over something that belongs to you. It is the word used of a husband's response to betrayal, and it is applied to God's relationship with Israel throughout the Hebrew scriptures. It does not mean envy of what someone else has.

79:6

Nations that "have not known" God means nations that do not acknowledge him or recognize any claim he has on them, a matter of allegiance rather than information. To "call on someone's name" is to invoke that god as your own in worship and oaths. These two lines are nearly identical to Jeremiah 10:25; one text is probably quoting the other.

79:7

"Jacob" stands for the whole nation descended from him, Jacob was renamed Israel, and his name is used as shorthand for his descendants.

79:8

The Hebrew phrase can mean either the sins of earlier generations or the speakers' own earlier sins, and the psalm does not settle which; both readings were available to ancient hearers. In the King James, "prevent" carries its older sense of "come before" or "go out to meet", not "stop."

79:9

"Purge away our sins" translates the verb used for making atonement in the sacrificial system, to cover or wipe away guilt. "For thy name's sake" appeals to God's public reputation: in the ancient world a god's standing rose or fell with the fortunes of the people who worshiped him.

79:10

"Where is their God?" was a standard taunt of ancient warfare. A defeated nation was assumed to have a defeated or absent god, so the mockery is aimed past the people at the God they worship. Blood that had been shed and not answered for was thought of as an outstanding debt requiring settlement.

79:11

The Hebrew behind "those that are appointed to die" is literally "sons of death", an idiom for people already condemned or as good as dead, here prisoners of war awaiting execution.

79:12

Loose outer garments were belted so that the fold across the chest formed a pocket; grain, coins, or produce were measured out into it. To pay something "into their bosom" is to hand over the full amount directly. "Sevenfold" is a standard biblical way of saying complete and unstinting repayment rather than a literal multiplication by seven.

79:13

Calling a god or king the shepherd of a people was ordinary political language across the ancient Near East. It carried the sense of an owner responsible for feeding, defending, and keeping track of those in his charge.