Psalms 79:1

O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. Psalms 79:1.-THE COMPLAIG the pagan have seized God's land, desecrated the temple, and laid Jerusalem in ruins; the dead bodies of the saints are given to the fowls and beasts; the survivors are and object of reproach (Psalms 79:1). THE PRAYER (Psalms 79:5): appeal to the glory of God's name as at stake (Psalms 79:9); concluding promises of perpetual praise ()....

1._O God! the heathen have come into thy inheritance. _Here the prophet, in the person of the faithful, complains that the temple was defiled, and the city destroyed. In the second and third verses, he complains that the saints were murdered indiscriminately, and that their dead bodies were cast forth upon the face of the earth, and deprived of the honor of burial. Almost every word expresses the cruelty of these enemies of the Church. When it is considered that God had chosen the land of Judea to be a possession to his own people, it seemed inconsistent with this choice to abandon it to the heathen nations, that they might ignominiously trample it under foot, and lay it waste at their pleasure. The prophet, therefore, complains that when the heathen _came into the heritage of God, _the order of nature was, as it were, inverted. The destruction of the temple, of which he speaks in the se...

1-5 God is complained to: whither should children go but to a Father able and willing to help them? See what a change sin made in the holy city, when the heathen were suffered to pour in upon them. God's own people defiled it by their sins, therefore he suffered their enemies to defile it by their insolence. They desired that God would be reconciled. Those who desire God's favour as better than life, cannot but dread his wrath as worse than death. In every affliction we should first beseech the Lord to cleanse away the guilt of our sins; then he will visit us with his tender mercies....

PSALM LXXIX _The psalmist complains of the cruelty of his enemies and the_ _desolations of Jerusalem, and prays against them_, 1-7. _He prays for the pardon and restoration of his people, and_ _promises gratitude and obedience_, 8-13. NOTES ON PSALM LXXIX The _title, A Psalm of Asaph_, must be understood as either applying to a person of the name of _Asaph_ who lived under the captivity; or else to the _family of Asaph_; or to a _band_ of _singers_ still bearing the name of that _Asaph_ who flourished in the days of _David_; for most undoubtedly the Psalm was composed during the Babylonish captivity, when the city of Jerusalem lay in he

O GOD, THE HEATHEN ARE COME INTO THINE INHERITANCE - The nations; a foreign people. See Psalms 2:1, note; Psalms 2:8; note; Psalms 78:55, note. The term is one that would be applicable to the Chaldeans, or Babylonians, and the probable allusion here is to their invasion of the holy land under Nebuchadnezzar. 2 Chronicles 36:17. THY HOLY TEMPLE HAVE THEY DEFILED - They have polluted it. By entering it; by removing the sacred furniture; by cutting down the carved work; by making it desolate. See...

EXPOSITION THIS is "a psalm of complaint, closely parallel to Psalms 74:1." (Cheyne), and must, like that psalm, be referred to the time of the Babylonian conquest. It shows us the Holy Land occupied by the heathen, the temple desecrated, Jerusalem laid in ruins, the special servants of God put to death, and the whole nation of the Israelites become an object of scorn and reproach to their neighbours (Psalms 74:1). Some critics have supposed that it might have been written after the invasion of Shishak; but the condition of things is far worse than can be reasonably supposed to have been reached at that period. Others incline to assign it to the age of the Maccabees; but Jerusalem was not then destroyed, much less "laid on heaps" ...

O GOD, THE HEATHEN ARE COME INTO THINE INHERITANCE,.... The land of Canaan, divided among the children of Israel by lot and line for an inheritance, out of which the Heathen were cast, to make room for them; but now would come into it again; see Psalms 89:35, and this is called the Lord's inheritance, because he gave it as such to the people of Israel, and dwelt in it himself; and the rather this is observed as something marvellous, that he should suffer Heathens to possess his own inheritance; or the city of Jerusalem, which was the place the Lord chose to put his name in; or the temple, where he had his residence, called the mountain of his inheritance, Exodus 15:17, and into which it was always accounted a profanation for Heathens to enter; see...

Psalms 79 Lamentation and Prayer on Account of the Enemy _ 1. The Enemy in Jerusalem (Psalms 79:1)_ 2. How Long, Lord? (Psalms 79:5) Zion, the place He loves, mentioned in the preceding Psalm, is here prophetically seen in desolation. The nations have come into the inheritance, Jerusalem is become a heap of ruins, the temple is defiled. The dead bodies of His servants and His saints lie unburied, and the people are a reproach, a scorn and a derision. A similar prophecy we found in the Seventy-fourth Psalm, which should be compared with this Psalm. While Jerusalem and the temple has seen more than once such desolations, we must view these predicted calamities as being the final disaster which is yet to

LXXIX. THE SANCTUARY PROFANED. The Ps. is of the same date as Psalms 74. It does not suit the earlier destruction of the city and the Temple in 586 B.C. The words war, overthrow, and the like do not occur: the Temple is profaned, not destroyed. On the other hand, Psalms 79:3 is in striking accord with the picture drawn in 1Ma_1:37. Notice also the mention of the godly or Asideans in 2 (see Psalms 4:3). PSALMS 79:2 F. is quoted in 1Ma_7:17_._ Psalms 79:6 f. is from Jeremiah 10:25, and was perhaps inserted here by a later hand.

TITLE.. PSALM. Hebrew _mizmor._ See App-65. OF ASAPH. The eighth of the twelve Asaph Psalms. Compare Psalms 74, the second of the third book. See App-10. The Psalm is said to have "hardly any regular strophical divisions". But see the Structure above. GOD. Hebrew. _Elohim._ App-4. HEATHEN. nations. HOLY. See note on Exodus 3:5. TEMPLE. See 1 Kings 14:25 1 Kings 14:26. 2 Chronicles 12:2. Pillaged, but not destroyed. ON HEAPS. in ruins. Compare the prophecy in...