The Nations Have Come Into Your Inheritance
1 A Psalm by Asaph. God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. 2 They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth. 3 They have shed their blood like water around Jerusalem. There was no one to bury them. 4 We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are around us. 5 How long, Yahweh? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? 6 Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t know you, on the kingdoms that don’t call on your name, 7 for they have devoured Jacob, and destroyed his homeland. 8 Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need. 9 Help us, God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake. 10 Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let it be known among the nations, before our eyes, that vengeance for your servants’ blood is being poured out. 11 Let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death. 12 Pay back to our neighbors seven times into their bosom their reproach with which they have reproached you, Lord. 13 So we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever. We will praise you forever, to all generations.
Bodies lie unburied around a sacked city, and the prayer that follows appeals to God's reputation rather than to Israel's innocence.
A Psalm by Asaph. God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.
The possessives do the work. Your inheritance, your temple — the psalm's first move is to point out whose property has been damaged.
2 They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth. 3 They have shed their blood like water around Jerusalem. There was no one to bury them.
Unburied dead were the ultimate disgrace in that world, and the detail is not rhetorical: after a sack there is nobody left with the strength or the safety to do it.
How long, Yahweh? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?
The question assumes what the psalm never disputes — that this happened because God was angry, and therefore that it was deserved. Unlike the forty-fourth psalm, this one does not plead innocence.
Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need.
The guilt is admitted and located in the previous generation, which is a fair statement of how national catastrophe is actually experienced: the people paying were not the people who decided.
Help us, God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.
Twice in one verse the ground of the appeal is stated, and both times it is God's name rather than their need. This is the standard argument of the psalms of national disaster and it is the strongest one available to people who have just conceded that they deserved what happened. Having no case of their own, they appeal to his reputation.
Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let it be known among the nations, before our eyes, that vengeance for your servants’ blood is being poured out.
The taunt of the forty-second psalm, now put in the mouths of an occupying army, and the psalm treats it as a matter of public record rather than private hurt.
Let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death.
The most specific request in the psalm, and it is not for the nation. It is for the men in the condemned cells, and the greatness of God's power is invoked for the smallest possible mercy — that they be kept alive.
Pay back to our neighbors seven times into their bosom their reproach with which they have reproached you, Lord.
The hardest verse, and its object should be read carefully. What is asked to be repaid sevenfold is their reproach with which they have reproached you — the mockery of God, not the destruction of the city. The psalm asks for the insult to be answered rather than for the ruins to be avenged.
So we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever. We will praise you forever, to all generations.
The psalm ends with an undertaking, made by people standing in rubble.
held with reason What this mark means