A Psalm of Asaph. The nations, O God, have invaded Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble.
This psalm belongs to the time when the Church lay under genuine oppression, either when Assyria burnt the temple and dragged the people into captivity or when Antiochus defiled it with slaughter. The faithful bewail their calamities while acknowledging they were justly chastised, yet they take courage because God's own dishonor is bound up with theirs: the ungodly blaspheme His sacred name in persecuting His Church.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 79:1-13
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.
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?
Commenting on Psalm 79:1-5