Original Meaning
The Heading (79:0)
PSALM 79 BEGINS with the most basic of superscriptions—“A psalm of Asaph.” A mizmor is one of the most common designations for the poems of the Psalter. The phrase is derived from the Hebrew verbal root zmr, probably indicating a song accompanied by music.2
But it is the continuing association of this poem with the psalms of Asaph that is the telling factor in this superscription. We have observed the tone of lament that accompanies the psalms of Asaph in Book 3, and the continuation of this grouping inclines us to expect more of the same.
Bridging Contexts
TWO ELEMENTS OF THE PRAYER that is Psalm 79 make contemporary Christians profoundly uncomfortable—imprecation and lament. First, we are uncomfortable with the idea of asking God to do nasty things to other people (vv. 6, 12). This type of prayer is known as imprecation, and psalms that include such elements are described as imprecatory psalms—psalms that ask the Lord to take vengeance on one group of people or another. Second, we are uncomfortable with the lament aspects of many of the psalms. How is it that the psalmist dares to tell God his people have suffered enough? How dare he insist, as he clearly does, “We have suffered enough! We get the point! It’s time to show mercy!” There is an undercurrent of complaint in this poem, and our contemporary brand of Christian spirituality just doesn’t like that way of approaching God. So how to deal with these two issues?
Imprecation. Imprecatory psalms need to be seen for what they are: prayers! Their identity is significant to the whole dynamic. David Firth wrote a book about the imprecatory psalms and titled it Surrendering Retribution in the Psalms.14
This surrendering is precisely what occurs in the imprecatory psalms. Rather than encouraging God’s people themselves to seek vengeance against the Babylonians or the mocking nations, the psalmist encourages the people of God to offer these offenses over to him in prayer. What is more, the psalmist seeks only that retribution from God which is appropriate to the wrongs meted out against God’s people. Neighboring nations such as Edom mocked the Judahites when Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE, so the psalmist prays that the reproach that they hurled at Yahweh should be revisited on them sevenfold. Obviously, there is an element of intensification here, but the prayer is that reproach will be met with reproach, not that reproach should be met with annihilation from the face of the earth. So, the psalmist prays that God will meet mocking with mocking, and he leaves the act of retribution in God’s hands rather than taking it into his own hands. The imprecatory psalms are characterized by these two key features: giving over the act of retribution into the hands of God, who will respond to the prayers of his people precisely in the manner that he sees fit; and seeking no more than an appropriate response from God, not a vindictive one. (The psalms of imprecation are not vindictive.) Such prayers break cycles of violence because prayer is the substitute for a violent response to violence.15
Even with this awareness that prayer is better than responding violently and that vindictiveness is not “allowed” in the imprecatory psalms, I suspect that many readers would still consider these requests for God’s vengeance to be less than Christian. Before rejecting these canonical songs out of hand, however, we should consider some complementary questions. Just how should the Christian community respond to the injustices of this world—by being nice? Surely it is a more appropriate response to bring this question to God in prayer. German Old Testament scholar Erich Zenger asks the same question in his book A God of Vengeance?16
and makes several compelling arguments that the imprecatory psalms should be part of our communal spirituality in the church today. Among other observations, Zenger points out that imprecatory prayers treat social injustice and exploitation seriously. All too often Christians simply wring their hands in the face of oppression, as though we were powerless to do anything to stop it. But such injustice is an offense against God’s created order and therefore deserves to be laid before him in prayer. Imprecation does just that by saying, “Your world was never meant to be like this! Do something to set things right!” So imprecation treats injustice seriously as an offense against God’s plan for life on earth. Second, imprecation challenges our ambivalence toward injustice. Such prayers shape the way we think as much as anything else. In bringing injustice to God in prayer, we are forced to consider the daily reality of the world in which we live in the light of his design and plan for life on earth. Christians tend to be overly spiritual, yet we live in the real world. Responding to violent injustice in prayer forces us to focus on the world we live in rather than overfocusing on our future hope. Third, as Firth also points out above, imprecation leaves the right response in the hands of God. He knows what is best, so offering prayer to the one who is able to do all things is the best response to violence and injustice. There is no place for selfish vindictiveness in our prayers, for God will not tolerate such an attitude, which in prayer would also constitute a denial of the divine plan for life on earth. The whole point of imprecation is that we must let that prayer be an honest assessment of reality in the light of God’s design. In giving these matters over to God, we acknowledge that he alone truly knows what course of action is appropriate to the circumstances. “Imprecations affirm God by surrendering the last word to God. They give to God not only their lament about their desperate situation, but also the right to judge the originators of that situation. They leave everything in God’s hands, even feelings of hatred and aggression.”17
Lament. We are equally ill at ease with the undisguised honesty of the psalmist’s complaint in Psalm 79. In part we have addressed this issue already in our discussion of Psalm 73. Today’s Christian spirituality often discourages us from reminding God in the way the psalmist does here (e.g., see Ps 79:1–4). In our churches we would not often say something like, “How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever?” (v. 5). Basically, the poet points out injustices that have as yet gone unpunished and declares that God’s people have already suffered enough! Would we have the confidence to pray together in such a way as we bring our daily reality before God in prayer? We should. Just as individual prayer to God must be absolutely honest, so must be our prayer in community. It is in offering these prayers that we begin to see matters more clearly from God’s perspective. Also, such prayer reminds us of the character and activity of God. The Bible tells us what our God is like by nature and how he acts in this world. In making his complaint to God, implicitly the psalmist becomes convinced that the violent brutality suffered by the Jerusalemites will one day be avenged because such behavior is an offense against God (vv. 1–4). The psalmist is reminded of the true nature of God’s character—he is a God of mercy (v. 8). And, ultimately, he becomes convinced that one day God’s people will see his response and then in turn will respond to him by offering songs, not of complaint but of endless praise (v. 13). Honest prayer to God in community shapes the way we think of God and the way we view the reality of our present experience. Such prayer may sound forceful and, in some sense, inappropriate, but if as communities of God’s people we cannot be honest with God in prayer, our experience of life with him is poorer as a result. (See Contemporary Significance for more thoughts on this matter.)
Psalm 79 in the New Testament. “How long, LORD?” There are echoes of Psalm 79 in the words of the persecuted church in Revelation 6:10. In John’s apocalyptic vision, the martyred people of God call out to him seeking justice for the persecution the church had suffered on earth. Like the clear message of the poet’s voice in Psalm 79, there is no doubt regarding the divine perspective on their suffering. The martyred believers know that the injustices that led to their death merit God’s response. The issue is not whether God will respond. The only question is, When will God respond? As with the experience of the Old Testament community in Psalm 79, those who have died for their faith and now stand before God’s throne are told that they will have to wait a little longer for their vindication. Justice will be done, but it will be done in God’s time, not ours.
Contemporary Significance
WHY PRAY IF GOD ALREADY KNOWS? One of the interesting dynamics of Psalm 79 is this whole idea of reminding God of things that have happened. This reminding may seem strange to us, since we know that God already sees and knows everything. So why does the psalmist remind God of things that have happened? It would probably be legitimate to expand that question somewhat to address an issue that many Christians ask from time to time: Why pray when God already knows what is happening and what we need? Probably every Christian has experienced thoughts along these lines—if God knows everything and sees everything, if God is a caring Father and knows what we need, why should we bring these things to him in prayer? Does he not see, or is he unwilling to respond to our needs?
Therein lies the error of our thinking. So much of our practice of prayer is based on an attitude of functionality. We pray to get things done. We pray to accomplish something. The end of our prayer is to meet the needs of others (or, all too often, of ourselves). Prayer is the way to “get things done.” We have much to learn from Psalm 79 in terms of our attitude in prayer. Imagine coming home from a day at work in which you and three of your colleagues had just been fired. You decide not to say anything to your spouse because, after all, there is nothing that he or she can do about it. That same day you wreck the car but, again, do not talk to your family about what has happened. Later that week you are mugged at knifepoint, but once more you decide to keep the incident to yourself. The point, of course, is obvious: we talk about things with the people we love!
At the end of each and every day, wives and husbands talk with each other about their experiences at work or their day with the kids or what has been happening in the neighborhood. Each and every day, friends chat about everything and nothing, siblings catch up on what has been going on in their lives (good or bad), and parents endeavor to extract a fuller response than “Fine” to the question, “How was school?” Why is it so? The truth of the matter is that people who love each other talk with each other about their lives.
Did the psalmist believe that God had been asleep when Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed? No. Did he think that perhaps it had slipped God’s mind? No. Did he perhaps believe that God was not really very interested in the plight of his people? No. So why remind God of these events? People who love each other talk with each other about the things that are important to them. It is what we do. Prayer is about more than “getting things done”—it is about relationship with a Father who loves us and whom we love. So we talk about all the stuff in our lives—the big things and the little things. We talk about things as we see them, and we let God shape us to see things from his perspective. We pray as an expression of love, not as a means to an end. That is why we pray even though God already knows.18
Original Meaning
Reminding God of the Cost (79:1–4)
O GOD, THE NATIONS HAVE INVADED YOUR INHERITANCE. The opening verses of Psalm 79 are perhaps surprising for modern readers. This psalm begins by reminding God of the events that his people have faced in the fall of Jerusalem and the exile. First the poet reminds Yahweh that it is his inheritance which has been invaded and his temple that has been defiled—and by the goyim, the nations! The people of Israel were Yahweh’s inheritance and the land of Israel was designed to be their inheritance. We see this dynamic throughout the Old Testament. Moses’ prayer in Deuteronomy that Yahweh would spare the people describes Israel as God’s “inheritance” (Deut 9:26–29), and the same book describes the land of Israel as the people’s inheritance (4:37–38). Both land and people have been invaded and defiled by the rampant Babylonian armies. The following verses make it clear that it is not only the land but also the people who have been defiled in the fall of Jerusalem. “The nations” are those who “do not acknowledge [lit., know] you . . . that do not call on your name” (Ps 79:6). This powerfully terse imprecation makes the stakes absolutely clear from the very beginning: God’s chosen people have been defiled, God’s chosen land has been captured, the place that God chose as the symbol of his special presence has been destroyed, and all these calamities have been perpetrated by nations who worship other gods! Clearly, the psalmist does not believe in flowery introductions. He gets straight to the point, and the point is that Yahweh’s people and place have been violated by pagan nations who worship false gods.
They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the sky. The psalmist goes on to elucidate the human costs of the defilement that has taken place. Many of the psalms emphasize the cost of the exile in terms of infrastructure—the temple destroyed, the city in ruins (e.g., Ps 74:4–7)—but here the psalmist reminds God of the human cost of Jerusalem’s capitulation. His “servants” have not only been killed, but their bodies have also been left to rot in the open air. Surely this complaint is of a survivor. Insult has been added to injury. Not only has Jerusalem fallen, not only have the armies of Israel been defeated, but also the survivors have not been allowed to bury their dead. The psalmist and his compatriots are forced to look upon the bodies of friends and family, of men and women and children who have fallen within the city walls. Burial brings closure, and God’s people have been denied that closure.3
The pain is all the more stark because the psalmist knows that these corpses are those of Yahweh’s “servants” left for the birds of the air, and it is the “flesh of your own people” that is torn apart by the wild animals of the earth. These people are God’s people. Good people. Not only have servants and saints been killed by the godless, but God’s people who remain have actually been forced to look upon this tragedy without being able to do anything about it, thus increasing the sense of grievance that goes along with the sense of loss. Their treatment is an insult, and the psalmist reminds God that, by implication, any insult to the servants casts a shadow on their Master.
They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem. The intensity of human suffering caused by the fall of Jerusalem is further illustrated in Psalm 79:3, where the psalmist uses the language of sacrifice to describe the extent of the people’s misery. For the Old Testament community of faith, the idea of pouring out blood (shapak damam) is one that would be readily associated with the act of sacrifice (see Lev 4). In Jerusalem during any one of the annual festivals, the temple would be stained by the blood of animals poured out in sacrifice to Yahweh. There seems to be a poignant irony in the psalmist’s choice of words here: blood has been poured out all around Jerusalem, but it is the blood of Yahweh’s people rather than the blood of sacrifices to Yahweh. The temple has been defiled (Ps 78:1), so there is no scope for the pouring out of blood in sacrifice, but blood is still being poured out—the blood of God’s people. And, once again, the pain of being unable to bury the dead vexes the psalmist.
We are objects of contempt to our neighbors. In verse 4 the poet continues his lament over the shame experienced by God’s people. There is shame in the fact that Judah has been invaded, shame in the desecration of the temple, shame in the fall of the city of Jerusalem, shame in the bodies lying around the city unburied. In this verse the psalmist makes that sense of shame explicit. Neighboring nations mock the Judahites because of the fall of their capital and the defilement of their place of worship (vv. 10, 12). In the ancient world, the conquering of one nation by another was seen as proof that the victorious nation’s god was more powerful than the deity of the defeated people. So, we can only imagine the verbal torment that accompanied the physical pain of loss in the months and years following Jerusalem’s fall. The human cost of the exile is poignantly laid bare in these opening verses of Psalm 79—it is the pain of loss, but it is also the pain of shame.
Bridging Contexts
TWO ELEMENTS OF THE PRAYER that is Psalm 79 make contemporary Christians profoundly uncomfortable—imprecation and lament. First, we are uncomfortable with the idea of asking God to do nasty things to other people (vv. 6, 12). This type of prayer is known as imprecation, and psalms that include such elements are described as imprecatory psalms—psalms that ask the Lord to take vengeance on one group of people or another. Second, we are uncomfortable with the lament aspects of many of the psalms. How is it that the psalmist dares to tell God his people have suffered enough? How dare he insist, as he clearly does, “We have suffered enough! We get the point! It’s time to show mercy!” There is an undercurrent of complaint in this poem, and our contemporary brand of Christian spirituality just doesn’t like that way of approaching God. So how to deal with these two issues?
Imprecation. Imprecatory psalms need to be seen for what they are: prayers! Their identity is significant to the whole dynamic. David Firth wrote a book about the imprecatory psalms and titled it Surrendering Retribution in the Psalms.14
This surrendering is precisely what occurs in the imprecatory psalms. Rather than encouraging God’s people themselves to seek vengeance against the Babylonians or the mocking nations, the psalmist encourages the people of God to offer these offenses over to him in prayer. What is more, the psalmist seeks only that retribution from God which is appropriate to the wrongs meted out against God’s people. Neighboring nations such as Edom mocked the Judahites when Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE, so the psalmist prays that the reproach that they hurled at Yahweh should be revisited on them sevenfold. Obviously, there is an element of intensification here, but the prayer is that reproach will be met with reproach, not that reproach should be met with annihilation from the face of the earth. So, the psalmist prays that God will meet mocking with mocking, and he leaves the act of retribution in God’s hands rather than taking it into his own hands. The imprecatory psalms are characterized by these two key features: giving over the act of retribution into the hands of God, who will respond to the prayers of his people precisely in the manner that he sees fit; and seeking no more than an appropriate response from God, not a vindictive one. (The psalms of imprecation are not vindictive.) Such prayers break cycles of violence because prayer is the substitute for a violent response to violence.15
Even with this awareness that prayer is better than responding violently and that vindictiveness is not “allowed” in the imprecatory psalms, I suspect that many readers would still consider these requests for God’s vengeance to be less than Christian. Before rejecting these canonical songs out of hand, however, we should consider some complementary questions. Just how should the Christian community respond to the injustices of this world—by being nice? Surely it is a more appropriate response to bring this question to God in prayer. German Old Testament scholar Erich Zenger asks the same question in his book A God of Vengeance?16
and makes several compelling arguments that the imprecatory psalms should be part of our communal spirituality in the church today. Among other observations, Zenger points out that imprecatory prayers treat social injustice and exploitation seriously. All too often Christians simply wring their hands in the face of oppression, as though we were powerless to do anything to stop it. But such injustice is an offense against God’s created order and therefore deserves to be laid before him in prayer. Imprecation does just that by saying, “Your world was never meant to be like this! Do something to set things right!” So imprecation treats injustice seriously as an offense against God’s plan for life on earth. Second, imprecation challenges our ambivalence toward injustice. Such prayers shape the way we think as much as anything else. In bringing injustice to God in prayer, we are forced to consider the daily reality of the world in which we live in the light of his design and plan for life on earth. Christians tend to be overly spiritual, yet we live in the real world. Responding to violent injustice in prayer forces us to focus on the world we live in rather than overfocusing on our future hope. Third, as Firth also points out above, imprecation leaves the right response in the hands of God. He knows what is best, so offering prayer to the one who is able to do all things is the best response to violence and injustice. There is no place for selfish vindictiveness in our prayers, for God will not tolerate such an attitude, which in prayer would also constitute a denial of the divine plan for life on earth. The whole point of imprecation is that we must let that prayer be an honest assessment of reality in the light of God’s design. In giving these matters over to God, we acknowledge that he alone truly knows what course of action is appropriate to the circumstances. “Imprecations affirm God by surrendering the last word to God. They give to God not only their lament about their desperate situation, but also the right to judge the originators of that situation. They leave everything in God’s hands, even feelings of hatred and aggression.”17
Lament. We are equally ill at ease with the undisguised honesty of the psalmist’s complaint in Psalm 79. In part we have addressed this issue already in our discussion of Psalm 73. Today’s Christian spirituality often discourages us from reminding God in the way the psalmist does here (e.g., see Ps 79:1–4). In our churches we would not often say something like, “How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever?” (v. 5). Basically, the poet points out injustices that have as yet gone unpunished and declares that God’s people have already suffered enough! Would we have the confidence to pray together in such a way as we bring our daily reality before God in prayer? We should. Just as individual prayer to God must be absolutely honest, so must be our prayer in community. It is in offering these prayers that we begin to see matters more clearly from God’s perspective. Also, such prayer reminds us of the character and activity of God. The Bible tells us what our God is like by nature and how he acts in this world. In making his complaint to God, implicitly the psalmist becomes convinced that the violent brutality suffered by the Jerusalemites will one day be avenged because such behavior is an offense against God (vv. 1–4). The psalmist is reminded of the true nature of God’s character—he is a God of mercy (v. 8). And, ultimately, he becomes convinced that one day God’s people will see his response and then in turn will respond to him by offering songs, not of complaint but of endless praise (v. 13). Honest prayer to God in community shapes the way we think of God and the way we view the reality of our present experience. Such prayer may sound forceful and, in some sense, inappropriate, but if as communities of God’s people we cannot be honest with God in prayer, our experience of life with him is poorer as a result. (See Contemporary Significance for more thoughts on this matter.)
Psalm 79 in the New Testament. “How long, LORD?” There are echoes of Psalm 79 in the words of the persecuted church in Revelation 6:10. In John’s apocalyptic vision, the martyred people of God call out to him seeking justice for the persecution the church had suffered on earth. Like the clear message of the poet’s voice in Psalm 79, there is no doubt regarding the divine perspective on their suffering. The martyred believers know that the injustices that led to their death merit God’s response. The issue is not whether God will respond. The only question is, When will God respond? As with the experience of the Old Testament community in Psalm 79, those who have died for their faith and now stand before God’s throne are told that they will have to wait a little longer for their vindication. Justice will be done, but it will be done in God’s time, not ours.
Contemporary Significance
WHY PRAY IF GOD ALREADY KNOWS? One of the interesting dynamics of Psalm 79 is this whole idea of reminding God of things that have happened. This reminding may seem strange to us, since we know that God already sees and knows everything. So why does the psalmist remind God of things that have happened? It would probably be legitimate to expand that question somewhat to address an issue that many Christians ask from time to time: Why pray when God already knows what is happening and what we need? Probably every Christian has experienced thoughts along these lines—if God knows everything and sees everything, if God is a caring Father and knows what we need, why should we bring these things to him in prayer? Does he not see, or is he unwilling to respond to our needs?
Therein lies the error of our thinking. So much of our practice of prayer is based on an attitude of functionality. We pray to get things done. We pray to accomplish something. The end of our prayer is to meet the needs of others (or, all too often, of ourselves). Prayer is the way to “get things done.” We have much to learn from Psalm 79 in terms of our attitude in prayer. Imagine coming home from a day at work in which you and three of your colleagues had just been fired. You decide not to say anything to your spouse because, after all, there is nothing that he or she can do about it. That same day you wreck the car but, again, do not talk to your family about what has happened. Later that week you are mugged at knifepoint, but once more you decide to keep the incident to yourself. The point, of course, is obvious: we talk about things with the people we love!
At the end of each and every day, wives and husbands talk with each other about their experiences at work or their day with the kids or what has been happening in the neighborhood. Each and every day, friends chat about everything and nothing, siblings catch up on what has been going on in their lives (good or bad), and parents endeavor to extract a fuller response than “Fine” to the question, “How was school?” Why is it so? The truth of the matter is that people who love each other talk with each other about their lives.
Did the psalmist believe that God had been asleep when Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed? No. Did he think that perhaps it had slipped God’s mind? No. Did he perhaps believe that God was not really very interested in the plight of his people? No. So why remind God of these events? People who love each other talk with each other about the things that are important to them. It is what we do. Prayer is about more than “getting things done”—it is about relationship with a Father who loves us and whom we love. So we talk about all the stuff in our lives—the big things and the little things. We talk about things as we see them, and we let God shape us to see things from his perspective. We pray as an expression of love, not as a means to an end. That is why we pray even though God already knows.18
Original Meaning
Lament: The Cry of Despair and Hope (79:5–8)
HOW LONG, LORD? WILL YOU BE ANGRY FOREVER? The question “How long, LORD?” is a common one in the lament psalms of the Psalter (Pss 6:3; 13:1; 89:46 et al.). These two Hebrew words (‘ad mah) reflect the great pain of present experience. The following verses make it abundantly clear that the poet is aware of the causes of Israel’s present suffering (Ps 79:8–9), but the fact that it results from the people’s own sinfulness does nothing to ease the pain of their present suffering. The psalmist knows that Yahweh has the right to be angry with his people, yet their present suffering is so great that the poet feels compelled to voice the longing of the community that his wrath would pass in order for the tension and difficulty of the people’s present circumstances to ease. God has every right to be angry with the inhabitants of Jerusalem, yet the psalmist is forthright in his questioning. Yes, God has the right to punish his people for their faithlessness, but should that punishment go on forever? Just as there is an explicit reminder to God in verses 1–4, so we see an implied reminder in the psalmist’s questions. In asking “How long?” and “Will you be angry forever?” the psalmist is reminding God of his underlying character—a character that is merciful and disinclined to continue punishment beyond what is necessary to meet the intended ends.
How long will your jealousy burn like fire? This question shows that the poet knows the root cause of Yahweh’s activity in punishing his people. God is jealous because the people of Jerusalem refused to trust in him and, instead, turned to false gods. In the Old Testament the covenantal relationship between God and Israel is often likened to the relationship between a husband and wife (e.g., see Hos 1–3), so the worship of other gods echoes the act of adultery (Deut 31:16–18). “God’s ‘jealous wrath’ (v. 5) is his zeal for Israel’s exclusive relation to him and is the term used for God’s response to Israel’s commerce with other gods (Exod 20:5; 34:14; Deut 5:9; 32:16, 19; Josh 24:19: Ps 78:58).”4
God’s anger burns against his people because of their apostasy, but the rhetorical questions of Psalm 79:5 mark the psalmist’s plea that God’s anger be removed from his people and redirected toward the nations.5
Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you. The psalmist’s prayer is not just that God’s anger will be removed from his people but also that the punishment they have experienced would be diverted to those nations that have destroyed and mocked Israel in the events of the exile. “Let divine wrath, at first aroused by the covenanted community, be now oriented against the goyim [nations] for their unspeakable crimes. The goyim perpetrated these crimes because they did not know Yahweh. Perhaps the meaning should be that they refused to know.”6
It is clear in the poet’s mind that the people of Judah deserved their punishment, but this reversal in Psalm 79:6–7 urges Yahweh to respond to the gross criminality of the nations during the fall of Jerusalem, hence the explicit reminders of verses 1–4. In the mind of the psalmist, the fact that the nations still go unpunished for the barbarism that accompanied Jerusalem’s seizure serves as an indication that Yahweh’s activity is not yet complete. Yes, God’s people deserved punishment for their spiritual adultery, and there can be no denying that the horrible brutality perpetrated against the citizens of Jerusalem must also draw down God’s anger. There is no doubt in the psalmist’s mind about the ultimate nature of divine justice—the people of Jerusalem deserved their punishment, but so too do the nations who were the temporal instruments of that punishment. So the psalmist cries out that the punishment of the covenant community has run its course—they have suffered enough. Now it is time for Yahweh to exact justice upon the nations who brutalized, then mocked his people. These nations “poured out [shapak] blood like water all around Jerusalem” (v. 3), and now it is time for Yahweh to “pour out [again the verb shapak] your wrath” in punishment upon the peoples who have refused to acknowledge him and doubt his very existence (v. 10).
The rationale for this reversal of punishment is their very destruction of Jerusalem and devastation of God’s people. The irony is that God’s people brought this punishment on themselves, yet the nations who inflicted the punishment on Jerusalem cannot be held guiltless for the brutality of their own actions. The armies of Babylon “devoured Jacob” and “devastated his homeland” (v. 7). They dared to mistreat the chosen people of God and to wreak havoc on the very land that Yahweh had chosen as a place of rest for his people. Although these events were all somehow part of God’s plan for his covenant community, the psalmist knows that the brutal injustice of these activities against his people and the promised land will not go unpunished.
May your mercy come quickly to meet us. The psalmist has no other grounds for appeal than to call on the mercy of God’s character. He is aware of the sins both of his forefathers (v. 8) and of his own generation (v. 9).7
The psalmist knows that he cannot base his plea to God in the righteousness of his people. Their forefathers were not faithful, so the exile occurred; but the people in exile are no more true to God’s commands than their forefathers were, so no plea can be made on the grounds that the present generation has changed. The psalmist’s only basis for hope as he prays is that God will be true to his nature because he is merciful. The psalmist’s prayer is based on his knowledge of God’s character and practice. There is no other sure basis for confidence in prayer. The people have not suddenly changed. The poet’s confidence is based on his knowledge that neither has God suddenly changed!
The psalmist asks for forgiveness of sins (v. 8a) and the swift expression of God’s mercy (v. 8b), and he puts these requests in context by stressing the great need in which the people find themselves (v. 8c). The psalmist’s hope is based on his knowledge of Yahweh as the God of the exodus. There is a sense in which Exodus 34:6–7 is foundational to the Old Testament’s presentation of the fundamental character of God:
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
These verses are widely quoted in one form or another throughout the Old Testament.8
There is a sense in which this exodus revelation of God’s character—which is his response to the sinfulness of Israel in the golden calf incident—becomes something of a confessional statement for the people of God. Based on her experience of God throughout many generations since the exodus, Israel has come to know God as merciful in character. This understanding of Yahweh’s basic nature shapes the psalmist’s prayer. He has no plea to make based on his own worth or in the merit of this generation of God’s people—his only hope is to thrust their present situation into the hands of the God he knows to be gracious, compassionate, and merciful. The people’s need is great. The response of Psalm 79 encourages the reader toward an attitude of absolutely dependent prayer.
Bridging Contexts
TWO ELEMENTS OF THE PRAYER that is Psalm 79 make contemporary Christians profoundly uncomfortable—imprecation and lament. First, we are uncomfortable with the idea of asking God to do nasty things to other people (vv. 6, 12). This type of prayer is known as imprecation, and psalms that include such elements are described as imprecatory psalms—psalms that ask the Lord to take vengeance on one group of people or another. Second, we are uncomfortable with the lament aspects of many of the psalms. How is it that the psalmist dares to tell God his people have suffered enough? How dare he insist, as he clearly does, “We have suffered enough! We get the point! It’s time to show mercy!” There is an undercurrent of complaint in this poem, and our contemporary brand of Christian spirituality just doesn’t like that way of approaching God. So how to deal with these two issues?
Imprecation. Imprecatory psalms need to be seen for what they are: prayers! Their identity is significant to the whole dynamic. David Firth wrote a book about the imprecatory psalms and titled it Surrendering Retribution in the Psalms.14
This surrendering is precisely what occurs in the imprecatory psalms. Rather than encouraging God’s people themselves to seek vengeance against the Babylonians or the mocking nations, the psalmist encourages the people of God to offer these offenses over to him in prayer. What is more, the psalmist seeks only that retribution from God which is appropriate to the wrongs meted out against God’s people. Neighboring nations such as Edom mocked the Judahites when Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE, so the psalmist prays that the reproach that they hurled at Yahweh should be revisited on them sevenfold. Obviously, there is an element of intensification here, but the prayer is that reproach will be met with reproach, not that reproach should be met with annihilation from the face of the earth. So, the psalmist prays that God will meet mocking with mocking, and he leaves the act of retribution in God’s hands rather than taking it into his own hands. The imprecatory psalms are characterized by these two key features: giving over the act of retribution into the hands of God, who will respond to the prayers of his people precisely in the manner that he sees fit; and seeking no more than an appropriate response from God, not a vindictive one. (The psalms of imprecation are not vindictive.) Such prayers break cycles of violence because prayer is the substitute for a violent response to violence.15
Even with this awareness that prayer is better than responding violently and that vindictiveness is not “allowed” in the imprecatory psalms, I suspect that many readers would still consider these requests for God’s vengeance to be less than Christian. Before rejecting these canonical songs out of hand, however, we should consider some complementary questions. Just how should the Christian community respond to the injustices of this world—by being nice? Surely it is a more appropriate response to bring this question to God in prayer. German Old Testament scholar Erich Zenger asks the same question in his book A God of Vengeance?16
and makes several compelling arguments that the imprecatory psalms should be part of our communal spirituality in the church today. Among other observations, Zenger points out that imprecatory prayers treat social injustice and exploitation seriously. All too often Christians simply wring their hands in the face of oppression, as though we were powerless to do anything to stop it. But such injustice is an offense against God’s created order and therefore deserves to be laid before him in prayer. Imprecation does just that by saying, “Your world was never meant to be like this! Do something to set things right!” So imprecation treats injustice seriously as an offense against God’s plan for life on earth. Second, imprecation challenges our ambivalence toward injustice. Such prayers shape the way we think as much as anything else. In bringing injustice to God in prayer, we are forced to consider the daily reality of the world in which we live in the light of his design and plan for life on earth. Christians tend to be overly spiritual, yet we live in the real world. Responding to violent injustice in prayer forces us to focus on the world we live in rather than overfocusing on our future hope. Third, as Firth also points out above, imprecation leaves the right response in the hands of God. He knows what is best, so offering prayer to the one who is able to do all things is the best response to violence and injustice. There is no place for selfish vindictiveness in our prayers, for God will not tolerate such an attitude, which in prayer would also constitute a denial of the divine plan for life on earth. The whole point of imprecation is that we must let that prayer be an honest assessment of reality in the light of God’s design. In giving these matters over to God, we acknowledge that he alone truly knows what course of action is appropriate to the circumstances. “Imprecations affirm God by surrendering the last word to God. They give to God not only their lament about their desperate situation, but also the right to judge the originators of that situation. They leave everything in God’s hands, even feelings of hatred and aggression.”17
Lament. We are equally ill at ease with the undisguised honesty of the psalmist’s complaint in Psalm 79. In part we have addressed this issue already in our discussion of Psalm 73. Today’s Christian spirituality often discourages us from reminding God in the way the psalmist does here (e.g., see Ps 79:1–4). In our churches we would not often say something like, “How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever?” (v. 5). Basically, the poet points out injustices that have as yet gone unpunished and declares that God’s people have already suffered enough! Would we have the confidence to pray together in such a way as we bring our daily reality before God in prayer? We should. Just as individual prayer to God must be absolutely honest, so must be our prayer in community. It is in offering these prayers that we begin to see matters more clearly from God’s perspective. Also, such prayer reminds us of the character and activity of God. The Bible tells us what our God is like by nature and how he acts in this world. In making his complaint to God, implicitly the psalmist becomes convinced that the violent brutality suffered by the Jerusalemites will one day be avenged because such behavior is an offense against God (vv. 1–4). The psalmist is reminded of the true nature of God’s character—he is a God of mercy (v. 8). And, ultimately, he becomes convinced that one day God’s people will see his response and then in turn will respond to him by offering songs, not of complaint but of endless praise (v. 13). Honest prayer to God in community shapes the way we think of God and the way we view the reality of our present experience. Such prayer may sound forceful and, in some sense, inappropriate, but if as communities of God’s people we cannot be honest with God in prayer, our experience of life with him is poorer as a result. (See Contemporary Significance for more thoughts on this matter.)
Psalm 79 in the New Testament. “How long, LORD?” There are echoes of Psalm 79 in the words of the persecuted church in Revelation 6:10. In John’s apocalyptic vision, the martyred people of God call out to him seeking justice for the persecution the church had suffered on earth. Like the clear message of the poet’s voice in Psalm 79, there is no doubt regarding the divine perspective on their suffering. The martyred believers know that the injustices that led to their death merit God’s response. The issue is not whether God will respond. The only question is, When will God respond? As with the experience of the Old Testament community in Psalm 79, those who have died for their faith and now stand before God’s throne are told that they will have to wait a little longer for their vindication. Justice will be done, but it will be done in God’s time, not ours.
Contemporary Significance
WHY PRAY IF GOD ALREADY KNOWS? One of the interesting dynamics of Psalm 79 is this whole idea of reminding God of things that have happened. This reminding may seem strange to us, since we know that God already sees and knows everything. So why does the psalmist remind God of things that have happened? It would probably be legitimate to expand that question somewhat to address an issue that many Christians ask from time to time: Why pray when God already knows what is happening and what we need? Probably every Christian has experienced thoughts along these lines—if God knows everything and sees everything, if God is a caring Father and knows what we need, why should we bring these things to him in prayer? Does he not see, or is he unwilling to respond to our needs?
Therein lies the error of our thinking. So much of our practice of prayer is based on an attitude of functionality. We pray to get things done. We pray to accomplish something. The end of our prayer is to meet the needs of others (or, all too often, of ourselves). Prayer is the way to “get things done.” We have much to learn from Psalm 79 in terms of our attitude in prayer. Imagine coming home from a day at work in which you and three of your colleagues had just been fired. You decide not to say anything to your spouse because, after all, there is nothing that he or she can do about it. That same day you wreck the car but, again, do not talk to your family about what has happened. Later that week you are mugged at knifepoint, but once more you decide to keep the incident to yourself. The point, of course, is obvious: we talk about things with the people we love!
At the end of each and every day, wives and husbands talk with each other about their experiences at work or their day with the kids or what has been happening in the neighborhood. Each and every day, friends chat about everything and nothing, siblings catch up on what has been going on in their lives (good or bad), and parents endeavor to extract a fuller response than “Fine” to the question, “How was school?” Why is it so? The truth of the matter is that people who love each other talk with each other about their lives.
Did the psalmist believe that God had been asleep when Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed? No. Did he think that perhaps it had slipped God’s mind? No. Did he perhaps believe that God was not really very interested in the plight of his people? No. So why remind God of these events? People who love each other talk with each other about the things that are important to them. It is what we do. Prayer is about more than “getting things done”—it is about relationship with a Father who loves us and whom we love. So we talk about all the stuff in our lives—the big things and the little things. We talk about things as we see them, and we let God shape us to see things from his perspective. We pray as an expression of love, not as a means to an end. That is why we pray even though God already knows.18
Original Meaning
A Prayer for Mercy, a Prayer for Justice (79:9–13)
HELP US, GOD OUR SAVIOR. The remaining verses of Psalm 79 expand the prayer voiced in verse 8. In praying for God’s help, the psalmist uses the address “God our Savior.” While in contemporary Christianity we tend to think of the idea of God as Savior in spiritual terms, the Old Testament community viewed the saving nature of God in terms of divine activity in their behalf. Salvation is a much more physical and practical concept in the Psalter. So, the call for God’s help is actually a call for his practical intervention into the grim circumstances of the people in exile in Babylon. Once again, the rationale for this prayer is based on God’s nature, not in humankind. The psalmist prays for Yahweh’s help “for the glory of your name”; similarly, he asks for forgiveness “for your name’s sake.” Verse 10 highlights the fact that God’s name is mocked among the nations because of the present downtrodden circumstances of Israel. So, the psalmist grounds his prayer in the desire to see Yahweh’s name glorified among the nations once again. The mocking question “Where is their God?” implies that Yahweh is not a god at all or, at the very least, that he is not a god to be reckoned with. The true nature of the all-powerful Creator of the universe and all of humankind is called into question because of the moral and religious failure of Israel that resulted in the rebuke of exile. In his prayer, the psalmist basically says, “Enough is enough!” The character of Yahweh has been besmirched among the nations, and they continue to mock the one true God. The psalmist therefore bases his prayer in the desire to see God’s name glorified among the nations once again. And his prayer implies that the best way to restore Yahweh’s standing among the nations is through the restoration of Israel and the bringing of God’s just punishment on those nations who have mocked his character.
Make known among the nations that you avenge the outpoured blood of your servants. There is no doubt in the psalmist’s mind that Yahweh cannot tolerate injustice. Despite all the ambiguity surrounding the causes of the exile, the poet knows there can be no doubt with regard to God’s view of the events lamented in verses 1–4. Yes, in one sense, the people of Judah and Jerusalem “deserved” the rebuke of exile because they had betrayed their God and failed to heed the warnings of his messengers. God had warned them that the result of such behavior would be exile (Deut 28:64–68). But the fact that exile was part of the divine economy to bring his people to repentance does not change God’s view of brutality and injustice. Why God allows such traumatic national and international events will always be a mystery to us, but there should be no doubt with regard to God’s perspective on such matters. He hates injustice and will always avenge the blood of innocents (e.g., see Num 35:19, 21; Deut 19:12; Ps 9: 12). Once again, the psalmist sees the public act of divine retaliation as part of the defense of God’s true might and character among the nations. Deuteronomy 32:43 calls on the nations to rejoice with Israel, for should other peoples exploit them, Yahweh will avenge the blood of his servants. Here the psalmist calls on God to make good his promise so that his name will no longer be mocked by those who worship gods of wood and stone. “The jeering quotation from the foreign nations . . . held up to Yahweh at the beginning of this section (v. 10) makes unmistakably clear that this conflict between Israel and the nations is not simply about the survival of Israel (cf. the second section vv. 5–9), but about Yahweh’s own, specific divinity.”9
May the groans of the prisoners come before you. The psalmist’s prayer in verse 11 picks up on exodus imagery by calling on God to intervene in behalf of his people. The book of Exodus reminds the exilic generation that Yahweh heard the groaning of his people once before and remembered his covenant (Exod 2:23–26, which uses a synonym for groaning). He heard their groaning and responded by displaying the strength of his arm (15:16). So, effectively, the psalmist is calling on Yahweh to respond in behalf of the generation in exile in the same way that he did for the exodus generation. Once before he displayed his power to the nations by bringing freedom and release to his people. The prayer of the author of Psalm 79 is that God will do the same thing again. The people feel as though they are under a sentence of death (v. 11c), and only God can save them now.
Pay back into the laps of our neighbors seven times the contempt they have hurled at you, Lord. Imprecation is a concept that is alien to contemporary Christianity. It is often seen as being vindictive and vengeful—the antithesis of the gospel ethics taught by Jesus (Matt 5:43–48) and Paul (Rom 12:18–21). Here the poet prays that those who have mocked God’s people as a result of the fall of Jerusalem would experience such derision, but in a manifestly more powerful way.10
We will consider the theology and practice of imprecation more fully in the Bridging Contexts section, but suffice it to say here that the poet refuses to encourage the people to take any sort of revenge themselves. Of course, this refusal may simply be an expression of the people’s weakened and oppressed state—they have no capability of taking action against their mockers; yet I suspect that there is a more profound reason behind the psalmist’s prayer. He calls for a severe response from God, but he entrusts that rebuke to God. The poet prays for what he sees to be an appropriate punishment but, in the very act of prayer, subjects his own will and wisdom to the one who answers prayer.
It is interesting to note precisely what it is that draws the psalmist’s request for divine retribution. His prayer is not directed at the armies that laid waste to Jerusalem in such brutal fashion (Ps 79:1–4); rather, it is addressed at the mockers of verse 10. He has already prayed concerning the injustices of the invading armies (vv. 6–7), but he wants to make sure that the mockery that has called the very nature of God into question does not go without response. God has been slandered among the nations. They have claimed their own gods (worthless idols) to be more powerful than Yahweh. From the psalmist’s perspective, such falsehood must be publicly rectified so that the nations realize that Yahweh is the true God above all gods.
Then we . . . will praise you forever. Much of Psalm 79 is simply a prayer in which the psalmist reminds God of things he already (clearly) knows. Yahweh is fully aware of the brutalities suffered by his people when Jerusalem was captured, yet the psalmist reminds him of these pains (vv. 1–4). Equally, God is fully aware of the mockery that his name was subjected to following the capture of his people, yet the psalmist reminds him of these events as well (vv. 10, 12). For today’s readers this dynamic is strange, yet it is one that we see often in the Psalms. The poets of the Psalter often remind God of events that have occurred and of his promises to his people.11
Once again, at the very end of Psalm 79, the poet reminds God of something God knows, namely, that they are his people and are under his care. The psalmist states this reminder in a promise of praise. When God responds to the prayers of his people and “sets things right,” then the people’s public voice shall change from the lament of the present song to a voice of continuous praise.
This assurance, however, comes with a reminder that is implicit throughout the whole of Psalm 79. The people singing this psalm of lament are “your people, the sheep of your pasture” (v. 13, emphasis added; cf. Ps 100:3). In the same way, it was “your inheritance” that was invaded and “your holy temple” that was defiled (Ps 79:1, emphasis added). The slain of Jerusalem are described as “your servants” and “your own people” (v. 2). Equally, the punishment that Jerusalem had experienced was a result of “your jealousy” (v. 5), and the flip-side of this coin is that it is “for your name’s sake” (v. 9) and by “your strong arm” (v. 11) that the psalmist believes the people will be saved. This prayer is all about God and his relationship with his people. Such is the voice of lament. Although subtle, the poet voices the expectations of the people. They are “the sheep of” Yahweh’s pasture—under his protection and care—and this reality gives rise to expectations on their part. Their covenantal expectations are voiced in the prayer of Psalm 79.12
The people have sinned and received God’s rebuke for it. Their lament is grounded in their view of their own circumstances, and they believe they have suffered enough and have learned their lesson—hence their reminder to God that they are his people; hence their prayer for release from their present suffering; and hence their appeal that God will restore the honor of his own name and prove himself once again to be Lord over all the nations.13
Then his people will praise his name from generation to generation. Their prayer is for permanent restoration and that renewed community will be marked by continual, grateful praise.
Bridging Contexts
TWO ELEMENTS OF THE PRAYER that is Psalm 79 make contemporary Christians profoundly uncomfortable—imprecation and lament. First, we are uncomfortable with the idea of asking God to do nasty things to other people (vv. 6, 12). This type of prayer is known as imprecation, and psalms that include such elements are described as imprecatory psalms—psalms that ask the Lord to take vengeance on one group of people or another. Second, we are uncomfortable with the lament aspects of many of the psalms. How is it that the psalmist dares to tell God his people have suffered enough? How dare he insist, as he clearly does, “We have suffered enough! We get the point! It’s time to show mercy!” There is an undercurrent of complaint in this poem, and our contemporary brand of Christian spirituality just doesn’t like that way of approaching God. So how to deal with these two issues?
Imprecation. Imprecatory psalms need to be seen for what they are: prayers! Their identity is significant to the whole dynamic. David Firth wrote a book about the imprecatory psalms and titled it Surrendering Retribution in the Psalms.14
This surrendering is precisely what occurs in the imprecatory psalms. Rather than encouraging God’s people themselves to seek vengeance against the Babylonians or the mocking nations, the psalmist encourages the people of God to offer these offenses over to him in prayer. What is more, the psalmist seeks only that retribution from God which is appropriate to the wrongs meted out against God’s people. Neighboring nations such as Edom mocked the Judahites when Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE, so the psalmist prays that the reproach that they hurled at Yahweh should be revisited on them sevenfold. Obviously, there is an element of intensification here, but the prayer is that reproach will be met with reproach, not that reproach should be met with annihilation from the face of the earth. So, the psalmist prays that God will meet mocking with mocking, and he leaves the act of retribution in God’s hands rather than taking it into his own hands. The imprecatory psalms are characterized by these two key features: giving over the act of retribution into the hands of God, who will respond to the prayers of his people precisely in the manner that he sees fit; and seeking no more than an appropriate response from God, not a vindictive one. (The psalms of imprecation are not vindictive.) Such prayers break cycles of violence because prayer is the substitute for a violent response to violence.15
Even with this awareness that prayer is better than responding violently and that vindictiveness is not “allowed” in the imprecatory psalms, I suspect that many readers would still consider these requests for God’s vengeance to be less than Christian. Before rejecting these canonical songs out of hand, however, we should consider some complementary questions. Just how should the Christian community respond to the injustices of this world—by being nice? Surely it is a more appropriate response to bring this question to God in prayer. German Old Testament scholar Erich Zenger asks the same question in his book A God of Vengeance?16
and makes several compelling arguments that the imprecatory psalms should be part of our communal spirituality in the church today. Among other observations, Zenger points out that imprecatory prayers treat social injustice and exploitation seriously. All too often Christians simply wring their hands in the face of oppression, as though we were powerless to do anything to stop it. But such injustice is an offense against God’s created order and therefore deserves to be laid before him in prayer. Imprecation does just that by saying, “Your world was never meant to be like this! Do something to set things right!” So imprecation treats injustice seriously as an offense against God’s plan for life on earth. Second, imprecation challenges our ambivalence toward injustice. Such prayers shape the way we think as much as anything else. In bringing injustice to God in prayer, we are forced to consider the daily reality of the world in which we live in the light of his design and plan for life on earth. Christians tend to be overly spiritual, yet we live in the real world. Responding to violent injustice in prayer forces us to focus on the world we live in rather than overfocusing on our future hope. Third, as Firth also points out above, imprecation leaves the right response in the hands of God. He knows what is best, so offering prayer to the one who is able to do all things is the best response to violence and injustice. There is no place for selfish vindictiveness in our prayers, for God will not tolerate such an attitude, which in prayer would also constitute a denial of the divine plan for life on earth. The whole point of imprecation is that we must let that prayer be an honest assessment of reality in the light of God’s design. In giving these matters over to God, we acknowledge that he alone truly knows what course of action is appropriate to the circumstances. “Imprecations affirm God by surrendering the last word to God. They give to God not only their lament about their desperate situation, but also the right to judge the originators of that situation. They leave everything in God’s hands, even feelings of hatred and aggression.”17
Lament. We are equally ill at ease with the undisguised honesty of the psalmist’s complaint in Psalm 79. In part we have addressed this issue already in our discussion of Psalm 73. Today’s Christian spirituality often discourages us from reminding God in the way the psalmist does here (e.g., see Ps 79:1–4). In our churches we would not often say something like, “How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever?” (v. 5). Basically, the poet points out injustices that have as yet gone unpunished and declares that God’s people have already suffered enough! Would we have the confidence to pray together in such a way as we bring our daily reality before God in prayer? We should. Just as individual prayer to God must be absolutely honest, so must be our prayer in community. It is in offering these prayers that we begin to see matters more clearly from God’s perspective. Also, such prayer reminds us of the character and activity of God. The Bible tells us what our God is like by nature and how he acts in this world. In making his complaint to God, implicitly the psalmist becomes convinced that the violent brutality suffered by the Jerusalemites will one day be avenged because such behavior is an offense against God (vv. 1–4). The psalmist is reminded of the true nature of God’s character—he is a God of mercy (v. 8). And, ultimately, he becomes convinced that one day God’s people will see his response and then in turn will respond to him by offering songs, not of complaint but of endless praise (v. 13). Honest prayer to God in community shapes the way we think of God and the way we view the reality of our present experience. Such prayer may sound forceful and, in some sense, inappropriate, but if as communities of God’s people we cannot be honest with God in prayer, our experience of life with him is poorer as a result. (See Contemporary Significance for more thoughts on this matter.)
Psalm 79 in the New Testament. “How long, LORD?” There are echoes of Psalm 79 in the words of the persecuted church in Revelation 6:10. In John’s apocalyptic vision, the martyred people of God call out to him seeking justice for the persecution the church had suffered on earth. Like the clear message of the poet’s voice in Psalm 79, there is no doubt regarding the divine perspective on their suffering. The martyred believers know that the injustices that led to their death merit God’s response. The issue is not whether God will respond. The only question is, When will God respond? As with the experience of the Old Testament community in Psalm 79, those who have died for their faith and now stand before God’s throne are told that they will have to wait a little longer for their vindication. Justice will be done, but it will be done in God’s time, not ours.
Contemporary Significance
WHY PRAY IF GOD ALREADY KNOWS? One of the interesting dynamics of Psalm 79 is this whole idea of reminding God of things that have happened. This reminding may seem strange to us, since we know that God already sees and knows everything. So why does the psalmist remind God of things that have happened? It would probably be legitimate to expand that question somewhat to address an issue that many Christians ask from time to time: Why pray when God already knows what is happening and what we need? Probably every Christian has experienced thoughts along these lines—if God knows everything and sees everything, if God is a caring Father and knows what we need, why should we bring these things to him in prayer? Does he not see, or is he unwilling to respond to our needs?
Therein lies the error of our thinking. So much of our practice of prayer is based on an attitude of functionality. We pray to get things done. We pray to accomplish something. The end of our prayer is to meet the needs of others (or, all too often, of ourselves). Prayer is the way to “get things done.” We have much to learn from Psalm 79 in terms of our attitude in prayer. Imagine coming home from a day at work in which you and three of your colleagues had just been fired. You decide not to say anything to your spouse because, after all, there is nothing that he or she can do about it. That same day you wreck the car but, again, do not talk to your family about what has happened. Later that week you are mugged at knifepoint, but once more you decide to keep the incident to yourself. The point, of course, is obvious: we talk about things with the people we love!
At the end of each and every day, wives and husbands talk with each other about their experiences at work or their day with the kids or what has been happening in the neighborhood. Each and every day, friends chat about everything and nothing, siblings catch up on what has been going on in their lives (good or bad), and parents endeavor to extract a fuller response than “Fine” to the question, “How was school?” Why is it so? The truth of the matter is that people who love each other talk with each other about their lives.
Did the psalmist believe that God had been asleep when Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed? No. Did he think that perhaps it had slipped God’s mind? No. Did he perhaps believe that God was not really very interested in the plight of his people? No. So why remind God of these events? People who love each other talk with each other about the things that are important to them. It is what we do. Prayer is about more than “getting things done”—it is about relationship with a Father who loves us and whom we love. So we talk about all the stuff in our lives—the big things and the little things. We talk about things as we see them, and we let God shape us to see things from his perspective. We pray as an expression of love, not as a means to an end. That is why we pray even though God already knows.18
