Bible Commentaries
Psalms 79

Verses 1-13

This is a cry of distress. The conditions described are those of overwhelming national calamity. The country and the city of God are overrun and spoiled by ruthless enemies. The people have been slain and left without burial. Out of the midst of these circumstances the psalmist prays to God for pardon, help, and deliverance.

There is no present note of praise in the psalm, but there is an undertone of confidence in God. This is the quality of these old songs of the men of faith which makes them living and powerful in an age utterly different from the one in which makes them living and powerful in an age utterly different from the one in which they were written. A careful perusal of this song will show three things as most evidently forming the deepest conviction of the singer’s hope. First there is the sense that all the calamity which has overtaken the power and goodness of God. These things need not have been had they been faithful, for God is strong and tender. Again there is the passion for the glory of the Divine Name,

“Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy name; And deliver us, and purge away out sins, for Thy name’s sake. “Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God?”

Finally, the very fact of the song is a revelation of the underlying confidence in God. In distress the heart seeks its way back to some hiding-place, and finds it in the Name of God, Who, by suffering is dealing with them.