(an Asaph lyric)

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Unlike the psalms that precede it, Psalm 79 centers on not remembering: “Don’t remember at us | our prior wrongs / hurry, let come at us | your tendernesses / for we have been so | abased” (8). The curious irony is that these three lines are preceded by two lines— indeed, most of the first seven verses of the psalm— that do just the opposite, helping God remember the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem: “oh they feasted on | Jacob / and razed | his home” (7). Remember the destruction, the psalm says, but forget “our prior wrongs.” It’s a history that asks God to remember only those wrongs done by “the others” (1, 6, 10 x2). And as the second half of the psalm turns from trauma to revenge, it’s that partiality of memory that becomes so dangerous.

The psalm is a careful chiasm. The structure highlights its logic of provocation met by hawkish disproportionate response. The psalm’s first imperative, “spill your fury | on the others / who haven’t known you | and on the realms / who haven’t called | in your name” (6), is paralleled in the second half by a burst of imperatives and jussives:

hurry, let come at us | your tendernesses

for we have been so | abased

help us | God of our rescue     

for the honor of your name | free us                               

overlook our mistakes | for the sake of your name (8-9).

The failure of “the others” to call “in your name” (6) is contrasted with “the honor of your name” and “for the sake of your name” (9). These name-motivated imperatives that appeal to God’s vanity are preceded and followed by the poem’s three questions, arranged, as with the word “name,” with one (`ad mah) in the first half and two in the second half (lammah and ayyeh): “How long Lord” (5) and “Why let the others say | where’s their God” (10).

Nearly half of the poem takes place in verses 2-4 and 10-12, the psalm’s two main panels. The early part points to the bodies, “your servants’ corpses… your caring ones’ flesh” (2). It points to the blood, “they’ve spilled their blood | like water / all around Jerusalem | and no one to bury them” (3). And it points to the people’s loss of esteem in the eyes of their “neighbors”: “we’ve become a joke… a jape and a jest/ to those who surround us” (4). The bodies and blood return in the later part: “let it be known | among the others in our sight / the vengeance of blood | of your servants spilled” (10). The passive participle “spilled” refers both to the blood that was spilled and the blood of vengeance that is about to be spilled. The word “joke” (or “taunt”) from verse 4 returns twice in verse 12: “pay back | our neighbors / seven times | in the chest / their joke | they joke at you my lord.”

 Sevenfold revenge for mockery in verse 12 is one thing. “Vengeance of blood” in verse 10 is something else. The psalm clearly advocates for both. Others can continue to debate the ethics of these kinds of retribution. But verse 11, which stands between the other two calls for revenge, stands apart: “Let come to your face | the prisoner’s scream / from the force of your arm.” At first glance, that scream seems to come from one of the Lord’s caring ones, whose deaths the first half of the psalm relives. But the completed syntax makes clear that God is being invited to relish the sound of prisoners suffering “from the force” of God’s own arm. And the last line of verse 11 is truly haunting: “make more than enough | the children of death.” While the imperative hoter is admittedly ambiguous in its meaning, given that the root yatar means to leave a remainder or to be left, its use in other places clearly indicates abundance to the point of excess (vehoter Exod 36:7 and 2 Kgs 4:43; vehotirekha Deut 30:9). So although it is possible that this line may be read as a plea for God to hear his own people’s screams and to preserve his children from death, this reading seems secondary in the context of other lines calling for blood. The more likely reading is the darker, more dangerous one, that God is encouraged to revel in brutality.

At its beginning and end, in verses 1 and 13, the psalm returns to the scene of the temple. What at the beginning had been profaned, by the end seems to have been restored. At the same time, a psalm that appeals to God’s vanity as well as his loyalty ends with the promise of praise, which seems close to dependent upon the longer, more detailed fantasy of revenge.