Psalms 79

World English Bible 89 include this book

1 God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.

2 They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth.

3 They have shed their blood like water around Jerusalem. There was no one to bury them.

4 We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are around us.

5 How long, LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?

6 Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t know you, on the kingdoms that don’t call on your name,

7 for they have devoured Jacob, and destroyed his homeland.

8 Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need.

9 Help us, God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.

10 Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let it be known among the nations, before our eyes, that vengeance for your servants’ blood is being poured out.

11 Let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death.

12 Pay back to our neighbors seven times into their bosom their reproach with which they have reproached you, Lord.

13 So we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever. We will praise you forever, to all generations.

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1 place named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Jerusalem traditional Assembled for temple worship over several centuries.

When this was written

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 1010 BC–400 BC David and many others
The Psalter is a collection assembled over centuries; individual psalms range widely in date.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (1010 BC–400 BC).

1200 BC–1000 BC Iron working spreads in the Levant Levant
Iron gradually displaced bronze for tools and weapons across the eastern Mediterranean.
1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
776 BC First recorded Olympiad Greece
The traditional starting point of Greek historical chronology.
753 BC Traditional founding of Rome Rome
The legendary date of Rome's founding, later used as the anchor of the Roman calendar.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.

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