Help us, O God of our salvation, because of the glory of thy name; and deliver us, and forgive our sins, for thy name's sake.
Psalm 79 is the prayer of a people whose city lies in ruins and whose enemies are asking where their God has gone. Verse 9 is the turning point: they ask for help, for rescue, and for cleansing — and rest the whole plea on God's own name.
The psalm has already laid the disaster before God. What is striking is where the sufferers turn instead of hitting back:
The one point I have to notice is the way the heart turns to God when it is brought very low. It does not avenge itself, even here. Now that the worst evil has come upon it, it turns to God, and so remembers its own sins. Nor has it any plea but God's own name… Such is the effect of chastisement. It supposes that we know God. It produces lowliness of heart, true confession, no claim to any right to deliverance except God's own goodness and name — what He is. Yet the soul rests on that.
That is the shape of the verse: two things asked — rescue and cleansing — and one reason given twice, His name.
Praying "for the glory of Your name" can sound like flattery until you see what stands behind it. God has linked His name to this people. So their sin touches His glory, and forgiveness becomes something faith can ask for:
Faith sees the sins of the people because the glory of God identifies itself with such a people. That faith can claim deliverance from the results of those sins. This very glory makes the forgiveness necessary, for God has identified Himself in goodness with the people. All the more so, since this glory is what faith feeds on and dwells on — and, as said before, it is this glory that makes us feel how far sin and failure have gone.
Notice the order. God's glory is what makes sin look as bad as it is. Then that same glory is the only thing left to plead.
Where the ESV reads "atone for our sins," older translations say "purge away our sins." Both render one Hebrew verb:
The godly people of Israel in a future day will want restoration to their land and to God's favour. The Spirit of prophecy has provided them with fitting words to take up before God (Ps. 65:3; 79:9). They will look to God to purge away their sins. As a sinful people they will confess that God alone can do it. Under the law, atonement took place once a year as a picture, but the real atonement was still in the future… Nothing short of atonement by blood can give a sinful people a standing before the throne of God, and the conscious enjoyment of it… Keep in mind that the original meaning of the verb is to cover. Translators have rendered it at times as reconcile, purge, forgive, cleanse and pardon, as well as make atonement.
The prayer assumes something humbling. The offender does not set the terms of his own forgiveness.
Sin is a serious thing. The consequences for those who commit it are terrible, unless God provides a way to make atonement for the offence. The sinner is therefore entirely in the hands of Him against whom he has sinned. If God appoints that which can make atonement, well and good. If He does not, the iniquity of the offender can never be purged.
Verse 8 asks God not to hold former sins against them. Verse 9 asks Him to take them away. The answer comes far later, and far larger, than the one praying could have guessed:
The answer to this is plain in Hebrews 8:12: "I will remember their sins no more." But this will only come as the result of Israel receiving the Lord Jesus as the One who died for them and rose again… They keep crying to Him for salvation. God delights to provide it for His own glory, by making atonement for these sins (v. 9). Asaph at this time knew nothing of what that atonement would involve. The important matter was that it should be for God's own name's sake.
The plea does not stop with the people. How the watching nations see God is bound up in it too:
So for the glory of His Name they can appeal to Him to come in. They acknowledge the sins of their fathers and their own. But the glory of His Name still appeals for their salvation. The nations taunt Him as One not to be found in the day of need: let the avenging of the blood of His servants make Him known.
- Stripped — Deep trouble takes away every other argument. The heart stops defending itself, owns its own sin, and pleads nothing but what God is.
- Named — God has tied His name to this people, so their guilt touches His glory. That is what makes "for Your name's sake" a real plea and not a polite phrase.
- Covered — The word behind "purge away" means to cover. The once-a-year covering under the law pointed forward. Only atonement by blood gives a sinful people a standing before God.
- Granted — Only God can appoint a way to cover sin. The sinner sets no terms; he takes the remedy God gives.
- Known — The name pleaded for pardon is the name the taunting nations must come to know. The prayer ends not in relief only, but in God made known.
Wherefore should the nations say, Where is their God? Let the avenging of the blood of thy servants that is shed be known among the nations in our sight.
Psalm 79 is the prayer of a people in ruins. Their city is destroyed, their dead lie unburied, and their enemies stand over them with one cutting question about their God. Verse 10 hands that mockery back to God as an argument. The plea is not for rescue from pain. It asks God to make Himself known.
The mocking question is aimed at God, not at the sufferers. One writer takes verses 8-10 together and shows how the scene looked from outside:
They admit their sins, and that they have been brought very low. But they plead God's tender mercies, the glory of His Name, and the insult of the enemies who say, "Where is their God?" On the surface it might look to the world as if God did not care about the sufferings of His people.
The psalm does not call the dead "our people." It calls them God's servants. That one word makes their loss God's own concern:
It is His inheritance that the nations have defiled by their presence. The blood that has flowed like water around Jerusalem is the blood of His saints. He may have a dispute with His people, and correct them for their sins, judging them because they are His people. But sevenfold vengeance will fall on the pagan plunderers who add to their suffering. They plunder for themselves without fear, as if God had truly forgotten the lasting memorial of His name.
Note what that holds together. God's people deserve the discipline, and their attackers still deserve judgment. The plunderers act as if His name were forgotten, and the avenging will answer them.
Guilty people have no claim of their own to press. They admit the sins, and then appeal to something outside themselves:
So, for the glory of His Name, they can call on Him to step in. They admit the sins of their fathers and their own sins. Yet the glory of His Name still pleads for their salvation. The nations taunt Him as One who cannot be found in the day of need. Let the avenging of the blood of His servants make Him known.
This prayer is not an outburst God merely puts up with. He called for the same plea through the prophet Joel:
This is the plea that Joel 2 calls for, and earlier psalms mention it too (Psalm 42 and Psalm 43): "why should the nations say, Where is their God?" It demands that He make Himself known by avenging the blood of His servants. Then His people, the sheep of His pasture, would give Him thanks for ever.
Joel shows the same cry answered, with the priests crying alongside everyone else:
The humbling, we see, was to reach everyone and be complete. Even the priests must stand outside the sanctuary and cry to Jehovah with the people. They appeal to His faithfulness, so that the nations would not say, "Where is their God?" — as the Jews said to Jesus. Jehovah would hear His people once they were humbled like this.
That same taunt was thrown at Jesus. Another writer ties the end of the mockery to a death already suffered:
They may say this for a limited time, but not for ever. Men have shed the blood of God's Servant, and in His own time He would avenge it.
The setting of this psalm is not the church's own. Commentators say these words will fit another group of believers far better, but still leave the psalm open for any Christian to use:
Is there not another group of saints for whom these words will be far more strongly true? This is not to say the church cannot use such a psalm with blessing, or cannot see in it what truly applies to herself. But clearly the circumstances, the experience, the cries all belong to Jewish saints passing through the fire, and not to the church of God.
- Mockery. The enemy's question makes God look absent, as if He did not care what His people suffer.
- Name. Guilty people cannot plead their own record. They plead His name, and the glory of that name still pleads for their salvation.
- Blood. The dead are His servants. The land is His inheritance. So the crime is against Him, and judgment falls on the plunderers.
- Known. They ask God to avenge that blood before their eyes, and to make Himself known to the nations by doing it.
- Praise. The answer ends the taunt for good, and the sheep of His pasture give Him thanks for ever.