Psalms 74
Big idea: Written in the smoking ruins of the temple, and the detail is unbearable in its ordinariness: they behaved like men wielding axes, cutting through a thicket of trees. The carved work of the sanctuary broken down with hatchet and hammers, as though it were undergrowth. Worse than the wreckage is verse 9: we see no miraculous signs; there is no longer any prophet; neither is there among us anyone who knows how long. Against that silence the psalm reaches back to creation — you broke the heads of Leviathan; you made summer and winter — and argues that the God who did that cannot be finished.
Psalm 74 asks God to remember his own cause. Psalm 75 answers with God speaking about appointed times.
74:1–11 — They have burned your sanctuary to the ground
Written after the temple was destroyed, and it does not spare the reader the detail: axes in the carved work, hatchets and hammers, standards planted in the assembly, the sanctuary burned to the ground. Verse 9 is the loneliest line — no signs, no prophet, and nobody who even knows HOW LONG. The one comfort available to a lament, a timescale, has been taken away too.
1 A contemplation by Asaph. God, why have you rejected us forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? 2 Remember your congregation, which you purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your inheritance: Mount Zion, in which you have lived. 3 Lift up your feet to the perpetual ruins, all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary. 4 Your adversaries have roared in the middle of your assembly. They have set up their standards as signs. 5 They behaved like men wielding axes, cutting through a thicket of trees. 6 Now they break all its carved work down with hatchet and hammers. 7 They have burned your sanctuary to the ground. They have profaned the dwelling place of your Name. 8 They said in their heart, “We will crush them completely.” They have burned up all the places in the land where God was worshiped. 9 We see no miraculous signs. There is no longer any prophet, neither is there among us anyone who knows how long. 10 How long, God, shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blaspheme your name forever? 11 Why do you draw back your hand, even your right hand? Take it from your chest and consume them!
74:12–17 — Yet God is my King of old
The psalm's answer to its own ruin is to reach much further back than the temple. It recites creation as a victory — the sea divided, the heads of Leviathan broken, springs opened and rivers dried — using the imagery of the surrounding cultures' chaos myths and attributing all of it to Yahweh. And then it lands somewhere unexpectedly ordinary: day, night, summer and winter.
12 Yet God is my King of old, working salvation throughout the earth. 13 You divided the sea by your strength. You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. 14 You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces. You gave him as food to people and desert creatures. 15 You opened up spring and stream. You dried up mighty rivers. 16 The day is yours, the night is also yours. You have prepared the light and the sun. 17 You have set all the boundaries of the earth. You have made summer and winter.
74:18–23 — Arise, God! Plead your own cause
The last movement is all imperatives, and it makes a deliberate move: it stops asking on Israel's behalf and starts asking on God's. 'Plead your OWN cause' — the argument is that the insult is his, not theirs. The one tender image is a dove handed to wild beasts, and the psalm closes on rising noise rather than on an answer.
18 Remember this, that the enemy has mocked you, Yahweh. Foolish people have blasphemed your name. 19 Don’t deliver the soul of your dove to wild beasts. Don’t forget the life of your poor forever. 20 Honor your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the earth. 21 Don’t let the oppressed return ashamed. Let the poor and needy praise your name. 22 Arise, God! Plead your own cause. Remember how the foolish man mocks you all day. 23 Don’t forget the voice of your adversaries. The tumult of those who rise up against you ascends continually.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).