gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
heathen
גוֹיִ֨םgo.Yim
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine plural absolute
come
בָּ֤אוּBa.'u
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
inheritance
בְּֽנַחֲלָתֶ֗ךָbe.na.cha.la.Te.kha
H5159
properly · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
holy
קָדְשֶׁ֑ךָkod.She.cha
H6944
a sacred place or thing · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
temple
הֵיכַ֣לhei.Khal
H1964
a large public building · noun, common masculine singular construct
defiled
טִ֭מְּאוּTi.me.'u
H2930
to be foul · verb, piel perfect, 3rd person common plural
laid
שָׂ֖מוּSa.mu
H7760
to put (used in a great variety of applications · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Jerusalem
יְרוּשָׁלִַ֣םye.ru.sha.Lim
H3389
Jerushalaim or Jerushalem · proper noun, a place name
heaps
לְעִיִּֽיםle.'i.Yim
H5856
a ruin (as if overturned) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Chronicles 36:19 And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the go…
Lamentations 1:10 The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom tho…
Psalms 74:1-4 O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?
Micah 3:12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places…
Psalms 74:7-8 They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.
Jeremiah 26:18 Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of…
2 Kings 21:12-16 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both hi…
2 Kings 24:13 And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vesse…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 79:1-5
We have here a sad complaint exhibited in the court of heaven. The world is full of complaints, and so is the church too, for it suffers, not only with it, but from it, as a lily among thorns. God is complained to; whither should children go with their grievances, but to their father, to such a father as is able and willing to help? The heathen are complained of, who, being themselves aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, were sworn enemies to it. Though they knew not God, nor owned him, yet, God having them in chain, the church very fitly appeals to him against them; for he is King of nations, to overrule them, to judge among the heathen, and King of saints, to favour and protect them.
I.…
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 Psalm 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 a…
Psalm 79:1-4
1. O God! the heathen [or the nations] have come into thy inheritance; they have defiled the temple of thy holiness; they have laid Jerusalem in heaps. 2. They have given the dead bodies of thy servants for food to the fowls of the heaven; the flesh of thy meek ones to the beasts of the earth. 3. They have shed their blood like water, around Jerusalem: and there was none to bury them. 4. We have been a reproach to our neighbors; a scorn and a derision to them that are around us.
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…
The Church Fathers
Over the title of this Psalm, being so short and so simple, I think we need not tarry. But the prophecy which here we read sent before, we know to be evidently fulfilled. For when these things were being sung in the times of King David, nothing of such sort, by the hostility of the Gentiles, as yet had befallen the city Jerusalem, nor the Temple of God, which as yet was not even built. For that after the death of David his son Salomon made a temple to God, who is ignorant? That is spoken of therefore as though past, which in the Spirit was seen to be future. "O God, the Gentiles have come into Your inheritance" [Psalm 79:1]. Under which form of expression other things which were to come to pass, are spoken of as having been done. Nor must this be wondered at, that these words are being spoken to God. For they are not being represented to Him not knowing, by whose revelation they are foreknown; but the soul is speaking with God with that affection of godliness, of which God knows. For even the things which Angels proclaim to men, they proclaim to them that know them not; but the things which they proclaim to God, they proclaim to Him knowing, when they offer our prayers, and in ineffable manner consult the eternal Truth respecting their actions, as an immutable law. And therefore this man of God is saying to God that which he is to learn of God, like a scholar to a master, not ignorant but judging; and so either approving what he has taught, or censuring what he has not taught: especially because under the appearance of one praying, the Prophet is transforming into himself those who should be at the time when these things were to come to pass. But in praying it is customary to declare those things to God which He has done in taking vengeance, and for a petition to be added, that henceforth He should pity and spare. In this way here also by him the judgments are spoken of by whom they are foretold, as if they were being spoken of by those whom they befell, and the very lamentation and prayer is a prophecy.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Temple — First used of the tabernacle, which is called “the temple of the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:9). In the New Testament the word is used figuratively of Christ’s human body (John 2:19, 21). Believers are called…
Wailing-place, Jews’ — A section of the western wall of the temple area, where the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon to bewail their desolate condition (Ps. 79:1, 4, 5). The stones in this part of the wall are of great…
Gentiles · Often ravaged and defiled the holy land and sanctuary — Often ravaged and defiled the holy land and sanctuary
Jews, The · Denunciations against those who: Slaughtered — Denunciations against those who: Slaughtered
Temple · .HOLY TEMPLE — .HOLY TEMPLE
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Psalm begins with a plaintive description, and in fact one that makes complaint to God. Its opening sounds like Lam 1:10. The defiling does not exclude the reducing to ashes, it is rather spontaneously suggested in Psa 74:7 in company with wilful incendiarism. The complaint in Psa 79:1 reminds one of the prophecy of Micah, Mic 3:12, which in its time excited so much vexation (Jer 26:18); and Psa 79:2, Deu 28:26. עבדיך confers upon those who were massacred the honour of martyrdom. The lxx renders לעיים by εἰς ὀπωροφυλάκιον, a flourish taken from Isa 1:8. Concerning the quotation from memory in 1 Macc. 7:16f., vid., the introduction to Ps 74. The translator of the originally Hebrew Firs…
Ps 79 This lament describes the occasion of Jerusalem’s fall in 586 BC. The early history of Israel’s rebellions described in Ps 78 provoked God’s wrath, resulting in the desolation of Zion described here as the defilement of the Temple and the disgraced bodies that littered the landscape. The psalmist then prays for forgiveness and rescue (79:8-9), as well as for God to pay back the nation’s enemies (79:12-13). Other psalms lamenting the Exile include Pss 42–44, 102, 107, 126, 137.
79:1-4 The poet laments the desecration of the Temple and the success of the enemy.
79:1 your special possession: This phrase might refer to the land, the Temple (see 61:5), or the people (see 79:2; 78:71).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 79:1
O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.
O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance. It is the cry of amazement at sacrilegious intrusion; as if the poet were struck with horror. The stranger pollutes thine hallowed courts with his tread. All Canaan is thy land, but thy foes have ravaged it. "Thy holy temple have they defiled." Into the inmost sanctuary they have profanely forced their way, and there behaved themselves arrogantly. Thus, the holy land, the holy house, and the holy city, were all polluted by the uncircumcised. It is an awful thing when wicked men are found in the church and numbered with…
