Ps. 79.10b (call of blood)

Before our own eyes / let your name be known / among the nations
by the vindication / of the poured out blood / of your servants.

In the open. This is the first of several petitions that will flow, without interruption, to the conclusion of the psalm; they, in a sense, spill over the ending. For that reason, we need to pay particular attention to why this one is placed first. The answer, I believe, lies in the immediately preceding question and our reflections on how the psalmist ‘question-within-a-question’ pointed toward a hiddenness of God resulting from the defilement that has saturated the psalm. Again, the ‘hiddenness’ of God, in this context, is not due to him being clothed in ‘inaccessible light’. Rather, God’s hiddenness is a manifestation of his anger. It is, for this reason, an historical reality of tragedy, of his withdrawing his protective hand from his Temple, his City, his People and his Land. By doing so, he allows chaos to flood all of them and to, importantly, obscure his own glory. To the nations, he is not hidden but ‘in hiding’, defeated. For Israel, he is not defeated and therefore the nations “question” is contained within a much deeper question of their own: “Why do you allow the nations to think you are defeated?” (vs. 10). It is within this ‘greater question’ that his answer is rooted: to completely reverse the nations’ perception of God’s defeat they ask for a fully public display of vindication. They are not looking for something private (or, ‘spiritual’). They are looking for an historical ‘day’, an act that reverses the nations’ defilement, that removes the eclipse of their and his shame. This ‘act’ is to take place not only on behalf of Israel (“before our eyes”) but also “among the nations”.

The name and vindication. Crucially, this manifest act of vindication will be a manifestation of the divine name. When it (the reversal) occurs, the ‘person’ of God will be revealed; not simply his ‘power’. There is depth to this. We must recall that the nations have been specifically described as those who do not know God’s name and do not call upon it. Here, by contrast, when God acts in vindication of his servants his name “will be known among the nations”. This ‘knowing’ is an act of perception generated from the great reversal. Who they thought was concealed and defeated will be revealed to have been greater than their destructive power; he will, in fact, have contained their destruction within himself.

Resurrection. The vindication will be “of the out poured blood of your servants”. Clearly we are to find in this a reference back to verse 3 (“They poured out their blood like water, all around Jerusalem…”). This ‘reversal’ will be an act of resurrection power. It will, in other words, be a “blood response”. It is his servants ‘out-poured’ life that will be vindicated. This is astonishing—God’s name (the pinnacle of his personal revelation) is revealed to the nations as an act of resurrection power, a blood response and a vindication of his slain servants. This is the convincing power of God; his power to overcome the death dealing forces that overcame his servants in a supreme act of justice and love. That which so clearly signaled God’s defeat to the nations will become the resurrected vessel of his theophany to the nations. Their vindicated blood will be the theophany of his name. (“This is my blood, given for you…”).

Formally. Finally, we must signal here that these petitions begin the reversal of verses 1-4. The ‘out-poured blood of your servants’ is vindicated (verses 2-3). This life-giving power is what begins the reversal.