Psalms 79:1 - Meaning and Application

Here is a sad complaint brought before the court of heaven. The world is full of complaints, and so is the church, because it suffers not only with the world but from it, like a lily among thorns. God is the one they bring their case to. Where else should children go with their troubles, except to their Father, who is both willing and able to help?

They complain about the heathen, that is, the nations outside Israel, who were sworn enemies of God’s people. Though these nations did not know God or claim to serve him, the church rightly appeals to him against them, because he holds them in his hand. He is King over the nations, able to overrule them and judge among them, and he is King over his saints, ready to protect and favor them.

They complain here about the anger of their enemies and the wild fury of the oppressor, shown in several ways. First, it was turned against places. The nations came into God’s inheritance, invaded the holy land, and plundered and ruined it. Canaan was dear to faithful Israelites not only because it was their land, but because it was God’s inheritance, the place where he was known and where his name was great. Injuries done to religion should grieve us more than injuries done to ordinary rights, even our own rights. We should be more willing to see our own inheritance wasted than God’s inheritance.

The enemy also struck the holy city. They laid Jerusalem in heaps, piles of rubble, as if it were a graveyard. The people were buried in the ruins of their own houses, and their homes became their graves, their long home. They also attacked the holy house. The sanctuary, which God had built high and strong, and which had been thought as firm as the earth, was brought down to the ground. They defiled God’s temple by entering it and laying it waste. God’s own people had defiled it by their sins, and so he allowed their enemies to defile it by their insults.

They also turned their rage against people, against the bodies of God’s people, and their malice could go no farther. They spilled their blood freely and killed without mercy. Their eye did not spare, and they gave no quarter (Psalm 79:3). They shed blood like water all around Jerusalem. Whoever went in or out of the city was watched for by the sword. So much human blood was poured out that the streams seemed to run red. They did this as carelessly as if they were spilling water, not thinking that every drop would be remembered when God calls people to account for blood.

They also abused the dead bodies. After killing them, they would not let anyone bury them. Worse still, they dug up the bodies of God’s servants, the saints, whose names and memory they hated, and left them for birds and wild animals to eat. At the very least, they left the bodies of those they killed exposed, and sometimes hung them up in chains. This was especially painful to the Jews, because God had clearly forbidden such treatment as a cruel thing (Deuteronomy 21:23). This same kind of shameful treatment is foretold for Christ’s witnesses (Revelation 11:9). Even their dead bodies became witnesses against their persecutors. As Augustine noted, this is not mentioned to show how miserable the persecuted were, since the bodies of the saints will rise in glory, but to show the wickedness of the persecutors.

They also attacked the people’s good name. The surviving Jews had become a reproach to their neighbors. Others used every chance to insult them, to mock them, and to make them look foolish, hateful, or both. They threw their sins and their sufferings in their faces, or else they treated their relation to God and their hope in him as a lie. So they became a scorn and a laughingstock to everyone around them. When God’s professing people fall away from what they and their fathers once were, they should expect to be reminded of it. It is a mercy if a deserved shame helps bring real repentance. Yet God’s gospel people have often suffered an undeserved reproach and scorn, and even the apostles were treated as the rubbish of the world.

What most amazes them is God’s anger, which they see in the anger of their neighbors. That is why they cry out, “How long, Lord, will you be angry? Will your anger last forever?” They are saying that they want nothing more than for God to be reconciled to them and to turn his anger away. Then the rest of human anger would be held back. Those who value God’s favor more than life cannot help fearing and pleading against his wrath, because it is worse than death.