The Destruction of the Temple and the Eruption of Chaos

With the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of Judah in 587 B.C., the people of God experienced not only a national crisis but also a religious one. They lost three tangible symbols that marked them as the people of God: the land, the Davidic king, and the temple. This psalm laments the temple’s destruction, and it takes on the seemingly impossible task of appealing to the God who has apparently rejected the temple’s “congregation” (Hb. ʿēdâ, not “people” as in the NIV, v. 2).

It is thus a psalm sung without the temple, either in Babylonian exile or in the land of Israel itself, as the book of Lamentations appears to have been. Other passages hint that there were regular services of mourning and fasting during the years of the ruine…