“O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.”
The people request that past sins not be counted against them: "Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low." The acknowledgment that the disaster may partly stem from ancestral sin does not lead to despair but to a plea for mercy. The supplicants position themselves as vulnerable and dependent on God's swift compassionate response; their lowness becomes an appeal to divine mercy.
Church Fathers on Psalms 79:8
1. Over the title of this Psalm, being so short and so simple, I think we need not tarry. But the prophecy which here we read sent before, we know to be evidently fulfilled. For when these things were being sung in the times of King David, nothing of such sort, by the hostility of the Gentiles, as yet had befallen the city Jerusalem, nor the Temple of God, which as yet was not even built. For that after the death of David his son Salomon made a temple to God, who is ignorant?…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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