The first strophe vividly describes the ghastly sights that wrung the psalmist's heart, and will, as he trusts, move God's to pity and help. The same thought as was expressed in Psalm lxxiv. underlies the emphatic repetition of "Thy" in this strophe--namely, the implication of God's fair name in His people's disasters. "_Thine_ inheritance" is invaded, and "_Thy_ holy Temple" defiled by thee "heathen." The corpses of "_Thy_ servants" lie unburied, torn by vultures' beaks and jackals' claws. The blood of "_Thy_ favoured Ones" saturates the ground. It was not easy to hold fast by the reality of God's special relation to a nation thus apparently deserted, but the psalmist's faith stood even such a strain, and is not dashed by a trace of doubt. Such times are the test and triumph of trust. If genuine, it will show brightest against the blackest background. The word in ver. 1 rendered "heathen" is usually translated "nations," but here evidently connotes idolatry (ver. 6). Their worship of strange gods, rather than their alien nationality, makes their invasion of God's inheritance a tragic anomaly. The psalmist remembers the prophecy of Micah (iii. 12) that Jerusalem should become heaps, and sadly repeats it as fulfilled at last. As already noticed, ver. 3 is quoted in 1 Macc. vii. 16, 17, and ver. 4 is found in Psalm xliv. 13, which is by many commentators referred to the Maccabean period. The second strophe passes to direct petition, which, as it were, gives voice to the stiffened corpses strewing the streets, and the righteous blood crying from the ground. The psalmist goes straight to the cause of calamity--the anger of God--and, in the close of the strophe, confesses the sins which had kindled it. Beneath the play of politics and the madness of Antiochus, he discerned God's hand at work. He reiterates the fundamental lesson, which prophets were never weary of teaching, that national disasters are caused by the anger of God, which is excited by national sins. That conviction is the first element in his petitions. A second is the twin conviction that the "heathen" are used by God as His instrument of chastisement, but that, when they have done their work, they are called to account for the human passion--cruelty, lust of conquest, and the like--which impelled them to it. Even as they poured out the blood of God's people, they have God's wrath poured out on them, because "they have eaten up Jacob."