Today’s Passage: Psalm 79
The nations have come in and taken everything. The temple God set apart for Himself lies defiled, Jerusalem is a heap of stones, and the bodies of His people lie in the open with no one left to bury them. Out of that ruin the song lifts its two great cries. First it cries, how long, and asks God Himself to pour out His wrath on the nations. Do not soften that into a private grudge, and do not sanitize it either. Then, in the same breath, the people turn and ask God to atone for their own sins, and the reason they give for all of it is His name.
As you read, hold this: Help us, for the sake of Your name.
Context A Psalm of Asaph
The little line at the top, “A Psalm of Asaph,” is part of the song and not a note pasted on later. Asaph’s name stood over a family of temple singers, and here that singing tradition is handed words for the darkest of days. Jerusalem is rubble and the house of God is defiled, and the song does not look away from what that costs in flesh and blood: bodies unburied, blood spilled, no one left to lay the dead to rest.
Psalm 79:1-4 (BSB)
A Psalm of Asaph.
¹ The nations, O God, have invaded Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble. ² They have given the corpses of Your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the earth. ³ They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead. ⁴ We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to those around us.
The psalm does not flinch from any of it. It names the rubble, the corpses given over to the birds, the blood poured out like water all around the city, and the shame of becoming a byword to every neighbor who stands and watches. It lets the ruin stand exactly as it is, without hurrying to explain it away.
Psalm 79:5-7 (BSB)
⁵ How long, O LORD? Will You be angry forever? Will Your jealousy burn like fire? ⁶ Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge You, on the kingdoms that refuse to call on Your name, ⁷ for they have devoured Jacob and devastated his homeland.
Now the two cries come together. How long, the people ask, will the LORD stay angry, and then comes the harder word: pour out Your wrath. Notice carefully where that cry is aimed. It is aimed at the nations that will not acknowledge God, the kingdoms that refuse to call on His name, the very ones who have devoured Jacob and laid his homeland waste. This is what we call imprecation, the prayer that hands judgment over into God’s hands, and we teach it plainly rather than hide it. What it is not is a license for anyone to settle a private score. The vengeance belongs to God, and the people ask Him to be the One who acts.
Study notes The same words in Jeremiah
Jeremiah prays almost the same sentence in the same ruin.
"Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge You, and on the families that do not call on Your name. For they have devoured Jacob; they have consumed him and finished him off; they have devastated his homeland." Jeremiah 10:25 (BSB)
A whole generation reached for this same language when the ruin came. This is not one person’s private heat carried up to God. It is a people, standing together in the wreckage, asking God to act for the honor of His own name.
Psalm 79:8-10 (BSB)
⁸ Do not hold past sins against us; let Your compassion come quickly, for we are brought low. ⁹ Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; deliver us and atone for our sins, for the sake of Your name. ¹⁰ Why should the nations ask, “Where is their God?” Before our eyes, make known among the nations Your vengeance for the bloodshed of Your servants.
Here the song turns, and it turns inward before it turns outward. The people do not come pleading clean hands. They ask God not to hold their past sins against them, they ask Him to kāphar, pronounced kah-FAR. Strong's H3722, to cover, atone, make atonement. They are not asking God to look away and pretend the sin is not there. They are asking Him to cover it, to make real atonement, and the ground they stand on when they ask is His name rather than anything they have earned. , and once again the reason they give is His name and not their own worth. Why, they ask, should the watching nations get to sneer, Where is their God? Even the vengeance for the bloodshed of His servants is something they ask God to make known, not something they reach out and seize for themselves.
Psalm 79:11-13 (BSB)
¹¹ May the groans of the captives reach You; by the strength of Your arm preserve those condemned to death. ¹² Pay back into the laps of our neighbors sevenfold the reproach they hurled at You, O Lord. ¹³ Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise.
The song gathers up the last of its griefs, the groaning of the captives and those already condemned to die, and asks God by the strength of His arm to keep them alive. Then it asks Him to pay back sevenfold the reproach the neighbors have hurled, and it is careful to say whose reproach it really is: the insult was aimed at the Lord Himself. Only after that does thanksgiving appear, and even then it waits on His deliverance, a promise of praise from generation to generation once He acts. The psalm does not end tidied up and resolved. It ends still asking, still reaching up out of the rubble with the same plea it began with: help us, for the sake of Your name.