Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

Psalm 79. This is a community lament, which was occasioned by a great disaster that fell upon Jerusalem (most likely the Babylonian destruction), and has many similarities to Psalm 74. It recounts the violence and impiety of the Gentile conquerors and asks God how long he intends to put up with such things. Running through the psalm is a recognition that, just as by reason of the covenant, Israel expects God to treat them differently than he treats the other nations, so too Israel should live faithfully to that covenant. The disaster came because Israel did not embrace the covenant in true faith; the psalm confesses that, asks for forgiveness, and pledges renewed faithfulness.

79:1-4 The Nations Have Defiled Your Holy Temple and Slain Your People. The first section chillingly describes the destruction that the nations (probably Babylon and its allies) have wrought on God's inheritance (i.e., the land where his own people dwell). They have defiled your holy temple, treating something holy as unclean, which is an atrocity against God (and invites a severe penalty from God, Lev. 20:3); they have laid Jerusalem (God's favored city and the home of David's dynasty, cf. Ps. 78:68) in ruins; and they have wantonly slaughtered God's own people (and left their bodies unburied, for wild animals to eat). We have become a taunt to our neighbors. This would hurt anyway, but the people singing this are God's people, and the neighbors are Gentiles; God's people were supposed to be an advertisement to the Gentiles of how great and good a God Yahweh is.