Ps. 79.11-12 (the arm)

Let the groans / of the prisoners / reach you
How great / is your arm!
Reprieve those / condemned to death
Pay back sevenfold / into the bosoms / of our neighbors
the contempt / in which they have held you / O Lord.  

Liberation, publicity and resurrection. We have noted in the previous verse the astonishing fact that Yhwh’s name will be revealed to the nations not simply in an act of brute strength and overwhelming force but, rather, in and through his resurrection power enacted on behalf of his own people. They, in a sense, become the theophany of his name (just like the saints). In the previous verse that ‘name manifestation’ appeared by way of the ‘blood call’—God’s brining into vindication the ‘poured out blood’ of his servants. We noted how this act directly related to the nations question of “Where is their God?” The nations question is aimed primarily at the seeming irrelevance of Yhwh, the fact that, they believe, he has been conquered and shamed. Israel, however, sees in this not the defeat of God but his ‘hiddenness’ due to his anger. For that reason the ‘answer’ that will come by way of the vindication will directly counter-act the nations belief that Yhwh has retreated into defeat and hiding. It will, in other words, be “before our eyes” and his name “known among the nations”. When God vindicates the blood of his servant(s) it will restore to him the full publicity of his Name and glory. He will move from ‘hidden’ to ‘revealed’ and this movement will be—crucially—by way of vindication. Just as the ‘out poured’ blood is ‘hidden’ in the ground, so will it now be ‘vindicated’. That theme continues here as the psalmist asks that God “let the groans of the prisoners reach you”. The image here is of the permitting the obscurity of a prisoner complaint enter into the divine presence of Yhwh and, within that presence, be ‘activated’ into a response by God. Hence the following line, “How great is your arm!” Once the groan enters God’s presence, the ‘arm’ reaches down from heaven and “reprieves those condemned to death”. This action is the same as that of the ‘blood call’. It is ‘bringing to light’ that which is hidden and obscure. It is making public that which has no glory and dwells in shame. These prisoners are as obscure and ‘worthless’ as blood poured out into the ground. To the nations they are a (reverse) theophany of Yhwh: they reveal Yhwh’s powerlessness. To the psalmist, however, they become the ‘ground zero’, so to speak, of God’s great reversal and the moment of the revelation of his name to the nations. By his being able to lift them ‘into the light’—to restore their glory and their publicity—he more greatly reveals the life-power of his name, a power super-above that of other gods. He becomes the ‘ground of resurrection’. Resurrection not being merely the movement from shame to publicity but of that movement from shame into the divine life of God as it is his Name that engages the resurrection. The Name-presence effects resurrection because it is resurrection. That is the Name’s ‘arm’ (his exodus arm). 

Reprieve. It is possible, even likely perhaps, that those ‘condemned to death’ is another way of describing the ‘prisoners’. The deepening of this line is, in fact, a confirmation of our reflections as the state of the prisoners are those ‘condemned to death’—they dwell on the edge of death. While they have not suffered the same fate of the servants whose blood was ‘out poured’ around Jerusalem, the do exist close to the same state of ‘death-obscurity’. They are without glory, honor or face (death). “Reprieve” of these people comes about then through the reversal of their state. It is not by way of giving them succor while in prison. It is by their being grabbed by the ‘arm of God’, lifted into his Name and being made to shine “before our own eyes” (vs. 10). 

Pay back. From the redemption of the prisoners we now come to the redemption of reputation. This is a theme that sounded in the opening lines. There, the onslaught of the nations caused, first, the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem as well as the death of God’s servants; second, it caused them to be shamed in the sight of their neighbors. The movement is one of ‘internal’ (what happens within the people) to ‘external’ (how they are perceived). They are of a single spectrum, however and, therefore, any redemption that occurs will trace the same movement. That is why the momentum of resurrection is following the same pattern: first, the ‘blood of the servants’ and the prisoners; second, (here) the reputation. Resurrection is mending each breach caused by the nations. That is where we find ourselves here and why ‘pay back’ is necessary. This ‘return of contempt’ is the effect of God’s name “being known among the nations” (vs. 10). It reverses the shame heaped upon Israel by her neighbors because her neighbors are now forced to see her redemption and suffer the consequent shame to them. 

Formal observation(s). When the question to God ceased the petitions began (vs. 10b). The petitions encompass seven lines with the middle line being “how great is your arm!”. Importantly, they can also be arranged in a type of call-answer (chiasm): A: Name knowing. B. Vindication of servants. C. Groans to God. D. Great arm. C1. Reprieve to prisoners. B1. Pay back. A1. Pay back the contempt of the Name. What we see in this is that A-C are the ‘call’, D is the beginning of the ‘response’ and C1-A1 represent the answer to A-C: the ‘great reversal’, with the ‘exodus arm’ standing directly in the middle ‘turning the ages’.