C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Psalms 79:2-4

Psa 79:1-4

The Psalm begins with a plaintive description, and in fact one that makes complaint to God. Its opening sounds like Lam 1:10. The defiling does not exclude the reducing to ashes, it is rather spontaneously suggested in Psa 74:7 in company with wilful incendiarism. The complaint in Psa 79:1 reminds one of the prophecy of Micah, Mic 3:12, which in its time excited so much vexation (Jer 26:18); and Psa 79:2, Deu 28:26. עבדיך confers upon those who were massacred the honour of martyrdom. The lxx renders לעיים by εἰς ὀπωροφυλάκιον, a flourish taken from Isa 1:8. Concerning the quotation from memory in 1 Macc. 7:16f., vid., the introduction to Ps 74. The translator of the originally Hebrew First Book of the Maccabees even in other instances betrays an acquaintance with the Greek Psalter (cf. 1 Macc. 1:37, καὶ ἐξέχεαν αἷμα ἀθῷον κύκλῳ τοῦ ἁγιάσματος). “As water,” i.e., (cf. Deu 15:23) without setting any value upon it and without any scruple about it. Psa 44:14 is repeated in Psa 79:4. At the time of the Chaldaean catastrophe this applied more particularly to the Edomites.