“Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion…” (Ps 48:2). Not now, says Asaph!
Where are you taking us now, Asaph? He is going directly to God. “O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance; Your holy temple they have defiled; they have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of Your servants they have given as food for the birds of the heavens” (Ps 79:1-2). Where else could he go in a time like this? Whether Asaph is prophesying Jerusalem’s destruction before it happened or the psalm was written after the fact and attributed to Asaph, we can’t tell. But the scene is agonizing. The old walls of Jerusalem today are a tawny gold, like Ariel, a lion. But they say that if blood was indelible, the City of Peace would be all red. More than twenty times it has been razed by “the nations.” But this psalm describes a killing zone. “Their blood they have shed like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them” (v 3), so few had survived. This debacle can’t be explained by superior numbers, military prowess, or strategies of war. There can only be one reason. The God whose home on earth was the temple had abandoned them. Thus Asaph laments, “How long, Lord? Will You be angry forever?” (79:5). But God is not petulant. What’s the reason behind the reason? Asaph knows. “Oh, do not remember former iniquities against us! Let Your tender mercies come speedily to meet us” (v 8). How many iniquities? The Lord says, “My people have forgotten Me days without number” (Jer 2:32). Asaph intercedes, calling on God to hear their cries, avenge their loss, atone for their sins. He can only do it through their Messiah. They must by faith receive “the good shepherd” who “gives His life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). Only then can they say, “We, Your people and sheep of Your pasture, will give You thanks forever” (Ps 79:13).