Psalms — Chapter 79
A psalm of Asaph.O God, heathens have entered Your domain,defiled Your holy temple,and turned Jerusalem into ruins.
They have left Your servants’ corpsesas food for the fowl of heaven,and the flesh of Your faithful for the wild beasts.
Their blood was shed like water around Jerusalem,with none to bury them.
We have become the butt of our neighbors,the scorn and derision of those around us.
How long, O ETERNAL One, will You be angry forever,will Your indignation blaze like fire?
Pour out Your fury on the nations that do not know You,upon the kingdoms that do not invoke Your name,
for they have devoured Jacoband desolated his home.
Do not hold our former iniquities against us;let Your compassion come swiftly toward us,for we have sunk very low.
Help us, O God, our deliverer,for the sake of the glory of Your name.Save us and forgive our sin,for the sake of Your name.
Let the nations not say, “Where is their God?”Before our eyes let it be known among the nationsthat You avenge the spilled blood of Your servants.
Let the groans of the prisoners reach You;reprieve those condemned to death,as befits Your great strength.
Pay back our neighbors sevenfoldfor the abuse they have flung at You, O Sovereign.
Then we, Your people,the flock You shepherd,shall glorify You forever;for all time we shall tell Your praises.
✦ Connected Across Traditions
The Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Hadith (An-Nawawi 13)
“None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
Mahabharata 5.1517
“One should never do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself.”
Dhammapada 10:1
“All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.”
Divine Compassion & Mercy
Quran 1:1
“In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.”
Luke 6:36
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Snp 1.8
“As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings.”
Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1
“One Universal Creator God. The Name Is Truth. Creative Being Personified. No Fear. No Hatred.”
Impermanence & Letting Go
Dhammapada 20:277
“All conditioned things are impermanent. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”
Tao Te Ching 76
“A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. The soft and yielding is the disciple of life.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Bhagavad Gita 2:22
“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.”