Commentary - Psalm 79:1-4

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 79 is a raw, corporate lament in the aftermath of a national catastrophe, almost certainly the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The psalmist, Asaph, is not just recording his personal grief; he is giving voice to the entire covenant community as they stand dumbfounded in the smoking ruins of their capital. The psalm is an appeal to God, a desperate plea grounded in the horror of what has happened. The central complaint is that God's own name, honor, and property have been violated. The nations have invaded His inheritance, defiled His temple, and slaughtered His people, leaving them a public spectacle of reproach and mockery. This is not just a political or military defeat; it is a profound theological crisis. The psalm confronts the brutal reality of covenant curses and forces the people to ask how long God will let His own name be dishonored by the triumph of the wicked.

The first four verses, which we consider here, function as the opening statement of the indictment. Asaph lays out the facts of the case before the heavenly court. He details the desecration of land, sanctuary, and people, painting a graphic picture of carnage and humiliation. This is what happens when God's people break covenant and God hands them over to the prescribed sanctions. The psalm is therefore a model for how the church should respond to chastisement and judgment: not with excuses, but with a full-throated acknowledgment of the disaster, which then becomes the basis for an appeal to God's mercy and zeal for His own glory.

Outline

Context In Psalms

This psalm is one of the twelve attributed to Asaph, who was a chief musician appointed by David. The Asaphite psalms often deal with national and corporate issues, wrestling with God's justice and His dealings with Israel as a whole. Psalm 79 is a community lament, a genre used by the people to mourn a shared disaster and appeal to God for deliverance. It shares strong thematic ties with Psalm 74, which also laments the destruction of the temple. It is also considered one of the imprecatory psalms, as it goes on to call for God's vengeance upon His enemies (Ps 79:6-7, 12). This psalm is set in the context of the entire Psalter, which teaches God's people how to pray in every circumstance of life, including moments of utter devastation when it appears God has abandoned His people. It gives us the vocabulary for crying out to God when the covenant curses detailed in books like Deuteronomy have come upon us in full force.

Key Issues

The Dishonor of It All

The driving engine of this psalm is the profound sense of dishonor. This is not primarily about the personal suffering of the Israelites, though that is brutally real. The central issue is the dishonor done to God. Notice how the psalm begins: "O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy temple." This is an invasion of God's property. The people being slaughtered are Your slaves and Your holy ones. The blood being shed is around Your city, Jerusalem. The reproach that falls upon the people is a reflection on their God. The surrounding nations are not saying, "Look how weak the Israelites are." They are saying, "Look how weak the God of Israel is."

This is a crucial lesson for the church. When we, the people of God, fall into public and flagrant sin, we are not just harming ourselves. We are dragging the name of our God through the mud. We become a reproach. The world looks on and concludes that our God is either powerless, indifferent, or non-existent. Asaph's prayer is therefore not fundamentally self-centered. He is appealing to God on the basis of God's own reputation. The plea, which comes later in the psalm, is "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name" (Ps 79:9). This is how we must learn to pray when we are under divine discipline. Our concern must be for the honor of the name we bear.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance; They have defiled Your holy temple; They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.

The psalm opens with a direct, blunt address to God. There is no preamble. The crisis is too urgent. Asaph lays out a three-fold catastrophe. First, the pagans, the goyim, have invaded God's inheritance. The inheritance here is the land of Canaan, the place God promised to Abraham and gave to His people. But it was never truly their property; it was always His, and they were tenants on it. The invasion is therefore an act of cosmic trespassing. Second, they have defiled God's holy temple. This is the heart of the disaster. The temple was the place where heaven and earth met, the dwelling place of God's name. Defilement means it was made common, unclean, profaned by the presence of idolaters and the shedding of blood. Third, they have laid Jerusalem in ruins, literally, "they have made Jerusalem into heaps." The holy city, the center of God's rule on earth, is now a pile of rubble. This is a complete undoing of the Exodus and the conquest. It is a systematic dismantling of God's work in history.

2 They have given the dead bodies of Your slaves for food to the birds of the heavens, The flesh of Your holy ones to the beasts of the earth.

From the destruction of places, Asaph moves to the desecration of people. The invaders have not just killed the inhabitants; they have treated their bodies with the utmost contempt. The victims are described in covenantal terms: they are God's slaves (or servants) and His holy ones (or saints, hasidim). These are the people set apart for God's own possession. Yet their corpses are left unburied, to be eaten by vultures and wild animals. In the ancient Near East, to be denied burial was the ultimate curse, a sign of complete and total humiliation. It was to be erased, to have no memorial. This is a graphic fulfillment of the curses threatened in Deuteronomy 28, where God warns that if Israel disobeys, "your dead body will be food for all the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away" (Deut 28:26). Asaph is telling God, "The very thing You warned us about has happened."

3 They have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem; And there was no one to bury them.

This verse intensifies the previous one. The scale of the slaughter was immense. Human blood, which the law held as sacred, was spilled so freely that it was like water. It was treated as something cheap and common. The life was in the blood, and the life of God's people was being poured out onto the ground with shocking indifference. The phrase "round about Jerusalem" suggests the killing was not just in the heat of battle, but a systematic butchering of the population after the city fell. And again, the ultimate indignity is repeated for emphasis: "there was no one to bury them." The social fabric had so completely collapsed that the basic rites of human decency could not be performed. The living were either dead themselves, in exile, or too terrified to act. This is a picture of absolute societal breakdown.

4 We have become a reproach to our neighbors, A mockery and derision to those around us.

After describing the physical devastation, the psalmist turns to the psychological and spiritual consequences. The survivors are now a reproach. This is a key biblical concept. It means to be an object of shame, disgrace, and contempt. The neighboring nations, the Edomites, the Ammonites, and others, who had always been rivals, were now looking at the ruins of Jerusalem and laughing. They were mocking not just Judah, but Judah's God. "So this is what becomes of the people who claimed Yahweh as their king? Some king he must be." This derision is the salt in the wound. It is one thing to suffer; it is another to be mocked in your suffering. This public humiliation is a direct assault on the honor of God, and it becomes the central basis for the psalmist's appeal for God to act.

Application

This psalm is hard medicine, but it is necessary. First, it teaches us that sin has real, historical, and corporate consequences. God is not a celestial guidance counselor who winks at our rebellion. He is a holy God who has promised both blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. When a nation, a community, or a church abandons His law, we should not be surprised when we are handed over to ruin and reproach. This psalm gives us a script for how to pray when we find ourselves in the rubble of our own making.

Second, it teaches us to be primarily concerned for the glory of God's name. Our greatest grief in the face of sin should not be our own discomfort, but the fact that our actions have made the name of Christ a laughingstock among His enemies. Our repentance should be driven by a zeal for His honor. We should pray, "Lord, for Your own name's sake, deliver us from this mess we have made."

Finally, we must read this psalm through the lens of the cross. The ultimate reproach, the ultimate desecration, the ultimate judgment fell upon Jesus Christ. His body was broken, His blood was poured out like water. He was mocked and derided by those who stood around Him. He bore the full weight of the covenant curse that we deserved. He became a reproach for us, so that we might be delivered from it. Because He endured the curse, we can now come to God even in the midst of our chastisement and, appealing to the blood of His Son, ask Him to turn our ruin into restoration for the glory of His name.