Psalms 79:8

"O remember not against us former iniquities." Sins accumulate against nations. Generations lay up stores of transgressions to be visited upon their successors; hence this urgent prayer. In Josiah's days the most earnest repentance was not able to avert the doom which former long years of idolatry had sealed against Judah. Every man has reason to ask for an act of oblivion for his past sins, and every nation should make this a continual prayer. "Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low."

"O remember not against us former iniquities." Sins accumulate against nations. Generations lay up stores of transgressions to be visited upon their successors; hence this urgent prayer. In Josiah's days the most earnest repentance was not able to avert the doom which former long years of idolatry had sealed against Judah. Every man has reason to ask for an act of oblivion for his past sins, and every nation should make this a continual prayer. "Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low." Hasten to our rescue, for our nation is hurrying down to destruction; our numbers are diminished and our condition is deplorable. Observe how penitent sorrow seizes upon the sweeter attributes, and draws her picas from the "tender mercies" of God; see, too, how she pleads her own distress, and not her goodness, as a motive for the display of mercy. Let souls who are brought very low find an argument in their abject condition. What can so powerfully appeal to pity as dire affliction? The quaint prayer-book version is touchingly expressive: "O remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, and that soon; for we are come to great misery." This supplication befits a sinner's life. We have known seasons when this would have been as good a prayer for our burdened heart as any that human mind could compose.

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 Exo 20:5; Exo 34:7; Lev 20:5; Lev 26:39-40; Num 14:18, Num 14:33; compare the notes at Rom 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; Psa 17:13, note; Psa 21:3, note; Isa 21:14, note; Mat 17:25, note; 1Th 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.