Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 79
A song of Asaph.
1 O God, the nations around us have raided the land that belongs to You;
they have defiled Your holy house
and crushed Jerusalem to a heap of ruins.
2 Your servants are dead;
birds of the air swoop down to pick at their remains.
Scavengers of the earth eat what is left of Your saints.
3 The enemy poured out their blood;
it flowed like water
all over Jerusalem,
and there is no one left, no one to bury what remains of them.
4 The surrounding peoples taunt us.
We are nothing but a joke to them, people to be ridiculed.
The Book of Psalms records both the highs and lows in the lives of God’s covenant people. Psalm 79 is an example of a communal lament after the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of God’s temple. Songs like these address God with a complaint resulting from some sort of national tragedy.
Communal laments share a common structure. First, the singers address God and tell Him of their problems. Second, they beg Him for help and express trust that He will answer them, often remembering how He has saved Israel in the past. Finally, the singers promise to praise God once He has resolved their problem. The specifics of the situation determine the thrust of the song. Communal laments are often the people’s poetic and practical response to their perception of God’s inaction in their affairs.
5 How long can this go on, O Eternal One?
Will You stay angry at us forever?
Your jealousy burning like wildfire?
6 Flood these outsiders with Your wrath—
they have no knowledge of You!
Drown the kingdoms of this world
that call on false gods and not on Your name.
7 For these nations devoured Jacob, consumed him,
and turned his home into a wasteland.
8 Do not hold the sins of our ancestors against us,
but send Your compassion to meet us quickly, God.
We are in deep despair.
9 Help us, O God who saves us,
to the honor and glory of Your name.
Pull us up, deliver us, and forgive our sins,
for Your name’s sake.
Eternal One: 14 As for My wicked neighbors so eager to take away the inheritance I gave My people Israel, look! There will come a day when I will uproot them from their lands, and I will take Judah from their midst. 15 But after I have uprooted them from their homelands, I will have mercy on them and restore them to their own lands and their own possessions. 16 And if they diligently learn the ways of My people and trust in Me instead of idols, if they swear by My name saying, “As the Eternal lives,” just as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then I will establish them alongside My people. 17 As for any nation that will not listen to and follow My ways, I will uproot it and destroy it completely.
This is what the Eternal has declared.
13 The Eternal directed me.
Eternal One: Go and buy a linen undergarment; put it around your waist next to your body beneath your clothes, but do not wash it.
2 So I bought the undergarment, just as the Eternal had told me, and put it around my waist. 3 Then the Eternal spoke to me a second time.
Eternal One: 4 Now take off this undergarment you’ve purchased and have been wearing around your waist, and go to the Euphrates. I want you to hide it in a crevice in the rocks there.
5 So I took the undergarment to the Euphrates and hid it in the rocks, just as the Eternal told me. 6 After many days had passed, the Eternal spoke to me a third time.
Eternal One: Now go back to the Euphrates, and get the linen undergarment I told you to hide there.
7 When I went back and dug up this garment from the place where I’d hidden it, I found it had begun to rot. This garment that was once new and clean was now completely worthless. 8 The word of the Eternal came to me to drive home His point.
At times God’s message given through Jeremiah must be acted out. He wants so badly for His people to understand, that mere words aren’t sufficient. This is one such moment.
Eternal One: 9 Mark My words, for the same thing will happen to the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 I will ruin these haughty and wicked people who ignore My words, who follow their own stubborn hearts, who run after other gods, who bow down to lifeless idols. They will end up like this rotten undergarment in your hands—completely worthless! 11 Just as the undergarment clings to a person’s waist, so did I, the Eternal One, make Israel and Judah to cling tightly to Me. They were to be My people, known by all, bringing honor and glory to My name. That was My plan for them, but they did not listen.
When God’s people—or people who claim to be God’s people—are hypocrites, then God is the one who gets the bad name. How often do we say one thing and do another? How often have we set a standard for others only to break it ourselves? The saying is true: we practice every day what we believe; all the rest is religious talk. There is a lot of religious talk out there, a lot of smugness and self-satisfaction. But every day people readily violate their consciences and the Lord’s reasonable teachings. For faith to matter, it has to get under your skin.
3 So then, do the Jews have an advantage over the other nations? Does circumcision do anything for you? 2 The answer is yes, in every way. To begin with, God spoke to and through the Jewish people. 3 But what if some Jews have been unfaithful? Does the fact that they abandoned their faith zero out God’s faithfulness? 4 Absolutely not! If every person on the planet were a liar and thief, God would still be true. It stands written:
Whenever You speak, You are in the right.
When You come to judge, You will prevail.[a]
5 If our perpetual injustice and corruption merely accentuate the purity of God’s justice, what can we say? Is God unjust for unleashing His fury against us? (I am speaking from our limited human perspective.) 6 Again, absolutely not! If this were so, how could God stand as Judge over the world? 7 But if my lie serves only to point out God’s truth and bring Him glory, then why am I being judged for my sin? 8 There are slanderous charges out there that we are saying things like, “Let’s be as wicked as possible so that something good will come from it.” Those malicious gossips will get what they deserve.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.