Psalms 79:8
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
O remember not against us former iniquities: let your tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.
American King James Version (AKJV)
O remember not against us former iniquities: let your tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.
American Standard Version (ASV)
Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers: Let thy tender mercies speedily meet us; For we are brought very low.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
Do not keep in mind against us the sins of our fathers; let your mercy come to us quickly, for we have been made very low.
Webster's Revision
O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily succor us: for we are brought very low.
World English Bible
Don't hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need.
English Revised Version (ERV)
Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.
Definitions for Psalms 79:8
Clarke's Psalms 79:8 Bible Commentary
Remember not against us former iniquities - Visit us not for the sins of our forefathers.
Speedily prevent us - Let them go before us, and turn us out of the path of destruction; for there is no help for us but in thee.
We are brought very low - Literally, "We are greatly thinned." Few of us remain.
Barnes's Psalms 79:8 Bible Commentary
O remember not against us forrmer iniquities - Margin, The iniquities of them that were before us. The Hebrew may mean either former times, or former generations. The allusion, however, is substantially the same. It is not their own iniquities which are particularly referred to, but the iniquity of the nation as committed in former times; and the prayer is, that God would not visit them with the results of the sins of former generations, though their own ancestors. The language is derived from the idea so constantly affirmed in the Scripture, and so often illustrated in fact, that the effects of sin pass over from one generation to the next, and involve it in calamity. See Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Leviticus 20:5; Leviticus 26:39-40; Numbers 14:18, Numbers 14:33; compare the notes at Romans 5:12, et seg.
Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us - literally, "Hasten; let thy tender mercies anticipate us." The word prevent here, as elsewhere in the Scriptures, does not mean to hinder, as with us, but to go before; to anticipate. See Job 3:12, note; Psalm 17:13, note; Psalm 21:3, note; Isaiah 21:14, note; Matthew 17:25, note; 1 Thessalonians 4:15, note. The prayer here is, that God, in his tender mercy or compassion, would anticipate their ruin; would interpose before matters had gone so far as to make their destruction inevitable.
For we are brought very low - The idea in the original word is that of being pendulous, or hanging down - as vines do, or as anything does that is wilted, or withered, or as the hands do when one is weak, faint, or sick. Then it refers to a failure or exhaustion of strength; and the idea here is that their strength as a nation was exhausted.
Wesley's Psalms 79:8 Bible Commentary
79:8 Prevent - Prevent our utter extirpation.