Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die;
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
When your people cannot sing or shout, their sighs still rise into God's ear and secure deliverance. Faith grows while it prays: the appeal to mercy is matched by an appeal to divine power, rising from those brought low to those appointed to death. God can preserve even those who bear the sentence of death in themselves; a lamb shall live between the lion's jaws if the Lord wills it.
AI summary
Pour out the full vials of wrath on those who know not God and call not upon His name; they have devoured Jacob, plundered and depopulated the land, which is crime enough before Him who counts His people the apple of His eye. Yet the Church owns its own sins as the procuring cause of all calamities: God was righteous in permitting what men wickedly performed.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 79:6-13