Psalm 79:12
Pay back into the laps of our neighbors sevenfold the reproach they hurled at You, O Lord.
Sermons
VengeanceHomilistPsalm 79:12
An Imprecatory PsalmS. Conway Psalm 79:1-13
Good Men God's InheritanceHomilistPsalm 79:1-13
Prayer for Deliverance from SufferingC. Short Psalm 79:1-13
The Inhumanity of Man and the Mixture of Good and EvilHomilistPsalm 79:1-13














The sighing of the prisoner. The prisoner here is not the man under the penalty of his crime. It is the captive placed under wearying limitations, not for personal faults, but as sharing the national disabilities. The case of such may be treated from three points of view. We have the sigh of the captive, the exile, and the oppressed.

I. THE SIGH OF THE CAPTIVE. The restraint of personal liberty is a most grievous distress. Man loves his freedom, and cannot endure bondage. There is the captivity of the body, but there is also a captivity of opinion, and a captivity of habits. When men are awakened, they begin to sigh under these bondages. "He is the free man whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves besides." Illustrate by the condition of captive Israel in Babylon. One psalmist pictures their distress in a very touching way (Psalm 137:1, 2), "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof." Not captives in the bodily or in the national sense, we may be captives to sin; then what is the sigh we breathe, and the cry we make, and into whose ears will our cry enter? There is One whose work concerns the "freeing of them that are bound." There is a trumpet voice which proclaims for all who sigh and cry in the prison house -

"The year of jubilee is come, Return, ye ransomed sinners, home."

II. THE SIGH OF THE EXILE. Where patriot feeling is strong, it is an inconceivable distress to be away from one's own land. At least it is to be compelled to be away. We may leave home pleasantly at our own will; we never leave home pleasantly against our will. Illustrate by the passionate yearning of the Babylonian exiles for Jerusalem. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." See Daniel, the exile, praying with his window open toward Jerusalem. And yet here is a most strange and unnatural thing - so many souls are exiled by the compulsions of sin and self-will from their true home in God, and yet they neither sigh nor cry for their return. For all who do sigh there is a Divine Zerubbabel, ever ready to lead them back.

III. THE SIGH OF THE OPPRESSED. For the captive life in Babylon was a life of stern trials and hardships. There were even some "appointed to die," placed in peril of life. To whom should they cry in their time of sore need, save to the God of their fathers? Like Samson, blind and oppressed, they could find a way to God. And sin is an oppression and humiliation. They who live in sin find it, as the prodigal son did, a hard lot; and presently they cry for home and father and God, even as he did. - R.T.

And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom their reproach.
Homilist.
This is the same spirit as is breathed out in ver. 6. It is revenge. We have here two things.

I. A NOBLE instinct. It is an instinct of justice, a cry against wrong. As an instinct, it is a spark from the Divine nature, a spark that reveals the justice which is at the head of the universe. Observe, the revenge here was not breathed for personal enemies, nor for bad men in the neighbourhood, the land, or the ago, but for bad men in a distant land and in a remote time. It was the breaking forth of that instinct of revenge which is in all our natures.

II. A noble instinct WRONGLY DEVELOPED. It was a prayer that God would punish with "sevenfold" the sufferings which their enemies had inflicted on them.

1. It was a personal, not a public, development. We are commanded not to return evil for evil, etc.

2. It was an exaggerated development. It is not merely, treat, them as they are treating us, but with seven times the cruelty.

3. It was an impious development. It was asking the God of Infinite Love to act cruelly, it was to dictate to Infinite Justice the method of avenging the wrong. " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." "If," says Sir T. Browne, "thou must needs have thy revenge of thine enemy, with a soft tongue break his bones, heap coals of fire on his head, forgive him, and enjoy it."

(Homilist.)

People
Asaph, Jacob, Psalmist
Places
Jerusalem
Topics
Bitter, Bosom, Breast, Hurled, Laps, Neighbors, Neighbours, O, Pay, Punishment, Render, Reproach, Reproached, Return, Seven, Sevenfold, Seven-fold, Taunted, Taunts, Turn, Wherewith
Outline
1. The psalmist complains of the desolation of Jerusalem
8. He prays for deliverance
13. and promises thankfulness

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Psalm 79:12

     1653   numbers, 6-10

Library
The Attack on the Scriptures
[Illustration: (drop cap B) A Greek Warrior] But troubled times came again to Jerusalem. The great empires of Babylon and Assyria had passed away for ever, exactly as the prophets of Israel had foretold; but new powers had arisen in the world, and the great nations fought together so constantly that all the smaller countries, and with them the Kingdom of Judah, changed hands very often. At last Alexander the Great managed to make himself master of all the countries of the then-known world. Alexander
Mildred Duff—The Bible in its Making

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Period ii. The Church from the Permanent Division of the Empire Until the Collapse of the Western Empire and the First Schism Between the East and the West, or Until About A. D. 500
In the second period of the history of the Church under the Christian Empire, the Church, although existing in two divisions of the Empire and experiencing very different political fortunes, may still be regarded as forming a whole. The theological controversies distracting the Church, although different in the two halves of the Graeco-Roman world, were felt to some extent in both divisions of the Empire and not merely in the one in which they were principally fought out; and in the condemnation
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History

The Formation of the Old Testament Canon
[Sidenote: Israel's literature at the beginning of the fourth century before Christ] Could we have studied the scriptures of the Israelitish race about 400 B.C., we should have classified them under four great divisions: (1) The prophetic writings, represented by the combined early Judean, Ephraimite, and late prophetic or Deuteronomic narratives, and their continuation in Samuel and Kings, together with the earlier and exilic prophecies; (2) the legal, represented by the majority of the Old Testament
Charles Foster Kent—The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament

A Summary of the Christian Life. Of Self-Denial.
The divisions of the chapter are,--I. The rule which permits us not to go astray in the study of righteousness, requires two things, viz., that man, abandoning his own will, devote himself entirely to the service of God; whence it follows, that we must seek not our own things, but the things of God, sec. 1, 2. II. A description of this renovation or Christian life taken from the Epistle to Titus, and accurately explained under certain special heads, sec. 3 to end. 1. ALTHOUGH the Law of God contains
Archpriest John Iliytch Sergieff—On the Christian Life

Psalms
The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or, rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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