Psalms 79:1-8

2 They have given the bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, and the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth.
3 Their blood has been flowing like water round about Jerusalem; there was no one to put them in their last resting-place.
4 We are looked down on by our neighbours, we are laughed at and made sport of by those who are round us.
5 How long, O Lord? will you be angry for ever? will your wrath go on burning like fire?
6 Let your wrath be on the nations who have no knowledge of you, and on the kingdoms who have not made prayer to your name.
7 For they have taken Jacob for their meat, and made waste his house.
8 Do not keep in mind against us the sins of our fathers; let your mercy come to us quickly, for we have been made very low.

Psalms 79:1-8 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 79

\\<>\\. This psalm was not written by one Asaph, who is supposed to live after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, or, according to some, even after the times of Antiochus, of whom there is no account, nor any certainty that there ever was such a man in those times; but by Asaph, the seer and prophet, that lived in the time of David, who, under a prophetic spirit, foresaw and foretold things that should come to pass, spoken of in this psalm: nor is it any objection that what is here said is delivered as an history of facts, since many prophecies are delivered in this way, especially those of the prophet Isaiah. The Targum is, ``a song by the hands of Asaph, concerning the destruction of the house of the sanctuary (or temple), which he said by a spirit of prophecy.'' The title of the Syriac versions, ``said by Asaph concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.'' The argument of the psalm is of the same kind with the Seventy Fourth. Some refer it to the times of Antiochus Epiphanes; so Theodoret; but though the temple was then defiled, Jerusalem was not utterly destroyed; and others to the destruction of the city and temple by Nebuchadnezzar; and why may it not refer to both, and even to the after destruction of both by Titus Vespasian? and may include the affliction and troubles of the Christians under Rome Pagan and Papal, and especially the latter; for Jerusalem and the temple may be understood in a mystical and spiritual sense; at least the troubles of the Jews, in the times referred to, were typical of what should befall the people of God under the New Testament, and in antichristian times.

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