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Written in a time of the deepest distress; the city is desolate and the whole nation oppressed by the cruel thraldom of their heathen oppressors. They are apparently deserted by God, and their bitterness enhanced by the feeling that God was exacting from them the penalty for the iniquity of their forefathers.

I. SUFFERING.

1. God's Church seemed in danger of being entirely overthrown. (Vers. 1-5.) Nothing causes profounder sadness to good men than the apparent triumph of the cause of unrighteousness and injustice.

2. This seemed a retributive penalty for the sins of themselves and their forefathers. (Ver. 8.) Nothing aggravates our sufferings so much as the knowledge that we, and those connected with us, have been the real causes of them; that they are Divine punishments.

II. THE PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE. (Vers. 8, 9, 12.) Contains three pleas.

1. Their own misery. "We are brought very low;" we are come to great misery (vers. 8, 12). It is the cry for mercy to a compassionate Father; and God has taught us to make this appeal.

2. For the sake of God's own Name. His Name or nature is that he is the God of salvation, and that for his own sake, as well as for the sake of his guilty sons and daughters, he will , deliver. It is his nature to help and save; his glory is his goodness, as we are taught in Exodus 34:6, 7. But this is more wonderfully brought out in the incarnation and the life and death of Christ. God's Name or nature is love.

3. Because of their close relation to God. (Ver. 13.) They are his people, nourished and cared for and led by him. The Lord will not abandon those that are so closely related to him. "The Lord is my Shepherd; therefore I shall not want." Christ, as the good Shepherd, is his Representative. - S.

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KJV: {A Psalm of Asaph.} O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

WEB: God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.