Psalm 79:8

Psalm 79 is a lament spoken by the whole community. It is one of the psalms of Asaph, Psalms 73–83, in the third book of the Psalter, Psalms 73–89, which returns again and again to national suffering and to God’s faithfulness through it. Its setting is most likely the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BC, when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed and many of the people were killed or carried into exile, as 2 Kings 25 and Jeremiah 52 record. The psalm opens on that scene: the holy temple defiled, the city laid waste, the dead left as food for birds and beasts, and Israel “become a reproach to our neighbours” (Psalm 79:1–4).

Psalm 74 mourns the same desecration of the sanctuary. Psalm 78, just before this psalm, tells the long story of Israel’s rebellion and God’s patience, and Psalm 80, just after it, is another prayer for the nation’s restoration.

The disaster struck at the heart of Israel’s faith. The temple stood for God’s dwelling among his people, and to leave the dead unburied was a deep shame. Among the nations a people’s defeat was taken as the defeat of its god, so neighbours such as Edom, Ammon and Moab gloated over Judah’s fall and asked where the LORD was. Verse 8 is where the psalm turns from describing the calamity to asking God for help, and from there to the end the people pray about two things together: their own guilt and suffering, and the honour of the LORD’s name.

The plea begins with confession. The verb zâkar means to remember, to call to mind, and the people ask God to leave their past sins out of account in his dealings with them now. The word for iniquities, ʻâvôn, means perversity, a twisting away from what is right, and it carries both the guilt of sin and the punishment that follows from it. “Former iniquities” points back over the nation’s long history of unfaithfulness to the covenant. The people own that their suffering is in part the consequence of that history, as Lamentations confesses: “We have transgressed and have rebelled” (Lamentations 3:42).

“Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us” is the heart of verse 8. “Tender mercies” translates racham, compassion, a word related to the Hebrew for the womb. It speaks of a love that is deeply felt, like a mother’s love for her child, and it moves God to act. It belongs with his covenant love, hesed, and with the name he proclaimed to Moses: “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6–7). Lamentations says the same: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23).

Verse 9 rests the whole plea on God himself. The people call him “God of our salvation”. The word yeshaʻ, from the root yasha, to save, means deliverance, rescue and victory. It covers rescue from enemies and also the restoring of a people’s well-being, and to call God by this name is to confess that every rescue comes from him. Another psalm says, “He that is our God is the God of salvation” (Psalm 68:20).

Two phrases frame the requests: “for the glory of thy name” and “for thy name’s sake”. A name, shêm, stands in Scripture for the person himself, his character, his reputation and his authority. To ask God to act for his name’s sake is to ask him to act as the God he has shown himself to be, keeping his covenant promises and upholding his honour. The only plea the people bring is his name.

Through Ezekiel, God says that he will act “for mine holy name’s sake”, and that he will sanctify his great name, “which was profaned among the heathen”, so that “the heathen shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 36:22–23). Daniel, praying over desolate Jerusalem, pleads in the same way: “for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies”, and “defer not, for thine own sake, O my God” (Daniel 9:18–19).

Verse 10 lays the nations’ mockery before God: “Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God?” The heathen, gôwy, plural goyim, are the foreign nations, here the Babylonian conquerors and the surrounding peoples who watched Jerusalem fall or joined in. Their question, ‘Ayh ‘Eloheyhem, challenged the LORD’s power, his presence and his faithfulness to his people. The same taunt cut one believer to the heart in another psalm: “My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?” (Psalm 42:3). The psalmist’s “wherefore” asks God why he should let his holy name be scorned so openly.

What he asks for is that God make himself known. The verb yâdaʻ is the ordinary word for knowing, often knowing by seeing and recognising. The people ask that God’s power, justice and faithfulness be plain among the nations “in our sight”, in their own day, where they can see it.

The way he is to be known is “by the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed”. The word nᵉqâmâh means vengeance, the act of avenging. The blood is that of God’s servants, slaughtered in the fall of the city, and in Genesis God declares that he will require an account for shed blood: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Genesis 9:5–6). The psalmist asks the righteous Judge to do what belongs to him alone, for “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35).

Verse 11 turns to the most helpless members of the community, the captives and the condemned. “Sighing” is ʼănâqâh, groaning, the cry of someone in distress, from a root meaning to shriek or groan. The prisoner, ʼâçîyr, is one who is bound, a captive at the mercy of his captors. “Those that are appointed to die” is in Hebrew bên tᵉmûwthâh, “sons of death”, from bên, son, and tᵉmûwthâh, death. It describes people under sentence of death, as captives in that war often were. The people ask that these groans “come before” God, rising into his presence like a petition.

The ground of the request is “the greatness of thy power”, literally the greatness of God’s arm, zᵉrôwaʻ, the arm as the picture of strength. The verb “preserve”, yâthar, has the sense of leaving something over, of keeping a remnant alive, so the people ask God to let the condemned remain alive by his strength. Jeremiah prays in the same terms: “Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17). Isaiah says God calls out the stars “by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power” (Isaiah 40:26). The angel told Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37), and Mary sang of the God who “hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:52).

Another psalm describes the very answer this prayer longs for. The LORD looks down from heaven “To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death” (Psalm 102:20).

Verse 12 asks God to repay. “Render” is shûwb, to turn back or return, and the neighbours’ reproach is to come back on them. “Sevenfold”, shibʻâthayim, means “seven times”. Seven often stands for completeness in Scripture, so the word asks for a full and complete measure of judgment. The bosom was where people carried things, and “into their bosom” asks that the repayment land on the offenders themselves. Jeremiah uses the same picture of God, who “recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them” (Jeremiah 32:18).

The offence is “their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord”. The word cherpâh is scorn, disgrace and shame, the contempt that wounds a person’s honour. The neighbours had made Israel a reproach (verse 4), and the psalmist sees that their scorn was aimed through Israel at the LORD himself. So the plea for justice is a plea for God’s own honour. Psalm 74 asks the same in the same grief: “O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?” (Psalm 74:10). All through Psalm 79, concern for God’s honour and concern for his people stand side by side.

The psalm ends in a vow, and “So” ties it to all that comes before: when God answers, his people will praise him. They call themselves “thy people”, ‘am, and “sheep of thy pasture”. The word tsôʼn names a flock of sheep and goats, and mirʻîyth, from a root meaning to feed, is a pasture, the place where a shepherd feeds his flock. The picture is of a flock that belongs to God and depends on him for guidance, food and protection, with God as the shepherd who provides for it even in a desolate land. The psalm that began with God’s servants left as food for the birds ends with them as his flock in his pasture. The same words come in Psalm 100:3, “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture”, and David says, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

“For ever” is ʻôwlâm, unending time, so their thanks are meant to outlast the crisis. In “we will shew forth thy praise to all generations”, the verb çâphar means to count or number, and in the form used here to recount, tell and declare. The people promise to tell over God’s praise to every dôwr, every generation after them. Psalm 78 makes the same promise: “We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD” (Psalm 78:4). Psalm 145 says, “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4).

This prayer finds its fullest answer in Jesus Christ. The former iniquities the psalmist confesses are dealt with in him, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God set him forth as a propitiation, “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:25–26), so God can set aside our sins and remain just. The purging the people asked for in verse 9 is what the Son did when “he had by himself purged our sins” (Hebrews 1:3). The New Testament speaks of “God our Saviour” (Titus 2:10), and it is through Christ that he has rescued us. He commends his love toward us “in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), and his tender mercy reaches our hearts, for “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5). Our High Priest is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15), since he shared our weakness and suffering.

The glory of God’s name, which verse 9 longs for, is the goal of Christ’s work. Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify thy name” (John 12:28), and every tongue will confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11). At the cross God’s justice and mercy met. There Christ “spoiled principalities and powers” and “made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). He “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), bearing reproach for others, for God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The full answer to the cry for justice in verses 10 and 12 waits for his return as Judge (Revelation 19:11–16) and for “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).

Christ is also the answer to the groaning of the prisoners in verse 11. He came “to preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18), as Isaiah had foretold, “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13), so those who were under sentence of death are kept for eternal life.

And the flock of verse 13 has its shepherd. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), and “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Peter tells believers, “ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25). The vow of praise to all generations goes on in the church, “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end” (Ephesians 3:21), and it comes to its fullness in a great multitude from every nation crying, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9–10).

This prayer gives God’s people words for the lowest places. It was first a nation’s prayer, and its confession, its plea for mercy and its cry of helplessness fit one person brought low just as well, whether by his own sin or by the troubles of a fallen world. It shows a God whose tender mercies may be asked to come quickly, who forgives for his own name’s sake, and who joins the honour of his name to the good of his people. It shows a God who hears the groan of a prisoner and has the power to keep alive those appointed to die. It hands the longing for justice to the Judge who alone may repay. And it ends where God’s people always end, as the sheep of his pasture, giving him thanks for ever and telling his praise to the generation that comes after.