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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 79:9 - 79:9
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The victory of the world is indeed not God's aim; therefore His own honour does not suffer that the world of which He has made use in order to chasten His people should for ever haughtily triumph. שְׁמֶךָ is repeated with emphasis at the end of the petition in Psa 79:9, according to the figure epanaphora. עַל־דְּבַר = לְמַעַן, as in Psa 45:5, cf. Psa 7:1, is a usage even of the language of the Pentateuch. Also the motive, “wherefore shall they say?” occurs even in the Tôra (Exo 32:12, cf. Num 14:13-17; Deu 9:28). Here (cf. Psa 115:2) it originates out of Joe 2:17. The wish expressed in Psa 79:10 is based upon Deu 32:43. The poet wishes in company with his contemporaries, as eye-witnesses, to experience what God has promised in the early times, viz., that He will avenge the blood of His servants. The petition in Deu 32:11 runs like Psa 102:21, cf. Psa 18:7. אָסִיר individualizingly is those who are carried away captive and incarcerated; בְּנֵי תְמוּתָה are those who, if God does not preserve them by virtue of the greatness (גֹדֶל, cf. גְּדֹל Exo 15:16) of His arm, i.e., of His far-reaching omnipotence, succumb to the power of death as to a patria potestas.
(Note: The Arabic has just this notion in an active application, viz., benı̂ el-môt = the heroes (destroyers) in the battle.)
That the petition in Psa 79:12 recurs to the neighbouring peoples is explained by the fact, that these, who might most readily come to the knowledge of the God of Israel as the one living and true God, have the greatest degree of guilt on account of their reviling of God. The bosom is mentioned as that in which one takes up and holds that which is handed to him (Luk 6:38); חֵיק- (עַל) אֶל (שִׁלַּם) הֵשִׁיב, as in Isa 65:7, Isa 65:6; Jer 32:18. A sevenfold requital (cf. Gen 4:15, Gen 4:24) is a requital that is fully carried out as a criminal sentence, for seven is the number of a completed process.