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

80:4-7 How Long Will You Be Angry with Us? Now the psalm takes up the reason for the cry of distress, namely, God is angry with his people's prayers (which implies that they have been unfaithful, cf. 74:1) and thus has brought sorrows upon them, especially that they have become an object of contention for their Gentile neighbors (cf. 79:4). As the next stanza will make clear, this is because these Gentiles have ravaged the land and people of Israel. Underlying this is the idea that faithful Israel ought to be the envy of the Gentiles, drawing them to the light by moral purity, social justice, and political stability (as in Psalm 79). Thus the current situation is a reversal of how things should be.