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Psalm 79 marks an abrupt contrast with Psalm 78, in that whereas 78 ends with the hope that God has chosen David and Zion, this psalm begins with the Temple and city having been destroyed. But the placing of these two psalms is not accidental. The references to the gift of food in 78:24–29 now contrast with the people being like food to be consumed by their enemies (79:2). The blood-like rivers in 78:44 are now a reminder of the spilt blood of God’s people (79:3). From having been fed exceedingly (me’od) well in the desert (78:29) the people are now brought exceedingly (me’od) low (79:8). Even if these correspondences are coincidences, the general contrast is deliberate: the great miracles described in Psalm 78 are now replaced with groans from the people and taunts from the enemies (79:11–12). And yet the psalm ends, as in Psalms 78 and 77, with knowing that the people are still God’s flock (78:71 and 79:13).

Psalm 79 continues this second group of *Asaphite psalms (78–83), with the military and nationalist details and the same spirit of questioning having resonances with the first group (73–77). It is possible to discern three strophes in the lament form of Psalm 79: verses 1–4 describe the oppression by enemy nations; verses 5–9 question God in prayer, using the familiar phrase ‘How Long?’; and verses 10–13, addressing God with imperative pleas, imagine the overturning of the nations. Thus there is some movement in the psalm towards hope for a change of fortune. One of the problems is that the psalm has a large store of formulaic language, so that, for example, in trying to account for the obvious correspondences between verse 4 and 44:14, between verse 5 and 89:46, and between verse 11 and Ps. 102:20, it is difficult to know which text has used the other, or indeed if each is from a common liturgical and formulaic source.

One clear example of later reception history is the use of verses 2–3 in 1 Macc. 7:16–17, which describes the treacherous slaughter of Jewish scribes by the Seleucid governor, Bacchides: the writer sees this as ‘in accordance with the word which was written…’ and then cites a paraphrase of 79:2–3. This is the image against verse 2 in the *Bristol Psalter (fol. 132v) which depicts Antiochus IV, crowned and seated, whilst the Maccabean faithful are being cast to the beasts. A similar image is found in the *Theodore Psalter (fol. 106v).¹⁰⁸ Similarly at *Qumran, 4QTanh 1 lines 3–4, Ps. 79:1–3 is cited, suggesting its relevance to the fate of a sectarian non-Temple community as well.¹⁰⁹ Baruch 3 and 4 also alludes to verses 1–3 and 8–13, applying the psalm to a later crisis of the people, probably under Antiochus V Eupator.¹¹⁰ The painful memory expressed in the psalm is used to relate to the continual experience of exile throughout Jewish history: this is brought out by *Kimḥi, who stresses the use of the word ‘forever’ in verse 5. Asking questions as to why such a horrific description of distress could possibly merit the title ‘song’, or ‘mizmor’, Kimḥi answers that only the Temple was destroyed, not the people as a whole.¹¹¹

Not surprisingly the Jewish liturgical use of this psalm places it with 137 and both are used at the end of the day on the 9^th of Av, to commemorate the destruction of the first and second temples (Sop. 18:3); they are recited at the Wailing Wall on the 9^th of Av to the present day.

Christian reception also emphasises the lament mood of the psalm, as it did for Psalm 74, to express horror at injustice during times of persecution. This was actually a psalm much loved by *Augustine, as he had been considering verse 8 (‘Do not remember the iniquities of our ancestors…’) just before be heard the mystical voice ‘Take up and read’ which precipitated his conversion a year later, as in Confessions 8.12. Augustine interpreted verses 1–4 in the light of Matt. 10:28: ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul’. When writing at the time of the sack of Rome in 410 CE, Augustine makes direct reference to the psalm: unburied bodies will still be redeemed by God.¹¹² *Jerome also referred to this psalm in his Homilies, using verse 1 to refer to the same attack on Rome (Letter 127.12).¹¹³ By contrast, *Bede and *Aquinas focus more generally on the burden of sin and the expressions of human suffering found in the psalm, affirming that it is Christ who will nevertheless avenge the blood of Christian martyrs.¹¹⁴ An unusual Christian reading is found in Bede’s Abbreviated Psalter, probably influenced by Jerome’s reading of verse 9 (‘Help us, O God of our salvation…’). Bede interpreted the word ‘salvation’ as explicitly referring to Jesus, so he translates verses 8–9 explicitly as: ‘Help us O God our Jesus, on account of the glory of your name’.¹¹⁵

Christian sufferers have clearly embraced this psalm. Pope Innocent III (1161–1216) had verse 1 inserted into the Eucharistic liturgy to describe the shame and horror felt by Christians when the ‘Holy Land’ was occupied by the Muslims. It was used (in the form of Clément *Marot’s metrical version) by the persecuted *Huguenots in the sixteenth-century: when taken out to the scaffold in 1546 this was the psalm they chanted.¹¹⁶ It also expressed the experiences of Roman Catholics in the seventeenth-century: for example, in 1608, when the Catholic mystic Luisa de Carvajal witnessed the execution of so many believers near London Bridge, she wrote ‘We can hardly go out to walk without seeing the heads and limbs of our dear and holy ones stuck up on the gates that divide the streets, and the birds of the air perching on them; which makes me think of the verse in the Psalms “The dead bodies of thy servants have been given to be meat unto the fowls of the air” (Ps. 79:2)’.¹¹⁷ More recently, verses 1–3 were used to describe the sufferings incurred by the Armenians during their holocaust under the Ottomans in 1915.¹¹⁸

Out of the experiences of religious persecution in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, *Byrd was motivated to write a motet based on Ps. 79:9, ‘Emendemus in Melius’ (‘Let us Amend for the Better’) using a five voice setting, which was published in 1575. This became associated with *Matins in the Roman Rite either for the first Sunday in Lent, or Ash Wednesday: set in bipartite form, its focus was on both the sins of the people and the mercy of God.¹¹⁹ *Purcell wrote a similar arrangement of verses 4, 7–8, and 13 (‘O remember not our old sins’); so too did *Tallis, on verses 7–9 and 13, alongside Ps. 100:3 (‘Remember not, O Lord God’). Samuel Sebastian *Wesley produced an arrangement from *Coverdale’s version, using just verse 8, entitled ‘Lord how long wilt thou be angry?’.

This joint Jewish and Christian experience is cleverly captured by the eighteenth-century poet Christopher *Smart, who moves between one tradition and the other and typifies the key theme in the psalm’s reception.¹²⁰

From afar, O God, the nations

Thy possessions storm and weep,

Churches now are desolations,

And Jerusalem an heap…

Human blood, like wasted water,

Round about the wall is shed,

And such universal slaughter

Leaves no burial for the dead.

Us of God’s own circumcision,

All our adversaries brand;

Scorned we are, the trite derision

Even for outcasts of the land…

Even more than Psalm 74, with which it is closely related, this is a psalm with universal significance through shared experiences of communal suffering.