Psalms 79-82

Psalm 79 (of Asaph)

• 1-4 The nations have defiled your temple, laid Jerusalem in ruins, killed your people with no one to bury them.
• 5-7 How long will you be angry with your people? Pour out your anger on the nations that have done this.
  
• 8-10 Forgive our iniquities, help us, deliver us, forgive us. The nations will be asking where you are.
• 11-13 Hear the groans of the prisoners, taunt those who taunted you. Then we your people will thank you forever, from generation to generation.

Psalm 80 (of Asaph)

• 1-3 Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim. Restore us, let your light shine, that we may be saved.
• 4-7 How long will you be angry, feeding us with the bread of tears, making us the scorn of our neighbors and enemies? Restore us, let your light shine, that we may be saved.
• 8-13 You took a vine out of Egypt, cleared ground for it, and it spread all over the land.
  
• 14-18 Turn and look from heaven, have regard for this vine. Rebuke those who have burned it. Then we will never turn back from you. Restore us, let your light shine, that we may be saved.

Psalm 81 (of Asaph)

• 1-5 Shout for joy, raise a song, blow the trumpet on our festal day, for it is a statute for Israel.
• 6-7 God's voice says, I relieved you, I rescued you in your distress.
• 8-10 "Hear me, while I admonish you. Do not listen to or bow down to foreign gods. I am the LORD your God who brought you up out of Egypt."
• 11-12 But my people did not listen, so I gave them over to their stubborn hearts.
• 13-15 O, that they would listen. Then I would subdue their enemies.
• 16 "I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."

Psalm 82 (of Asaph)

• 1-2 In his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods, God asks: "How long will you show partiality to the wicked?"
• 3-4 To the weak and lowly: 1) Give justice; 2) Maintain their right; 3) Rescue and deliver them.
• 5 They walk in darkness; earth's foundations are shaken
• 6-8 Even though, as children of God, you are gods, you will die like mortals.

There's a lot about this psalm that I need to study further: "in the midst of gods" - Is the psalmist saying other gods exist, or is he just comparing the real God to the phony ones? v. 5 - Who "walks in darkness," and how does this relate to the earth's foundations? v. 6 - Why are children of the Most High called gods?