Psalm 74: 1 – 23
You did it to yourself
A Contemplation of Asaph.
1 O God, why have You cast us off forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture? 2 Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, the tribe of Your inheritance, which You have redeemed— This Mount Zion where You have dwelt. 3 Lift up Your feet to the perpetual desolations. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary. 4 Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place; They set up their banners for signs. 5 They seem like men who lift up axes among the thick trees. 6 And now they break down its carved work, all at once, with axes and hammers. 7 They have set fire to Your sanctuary; They have defiled the dwelling place of Your name to the ground. 8 They said in their hearts, “Let us destroy them altogether.” They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land. 9 We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet; Nor is there any among us who knows how long. 10 O God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever?
11 Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them. 12 For God Is my King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. 13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea serpents in the waters. 14 You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces, and gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness. 15 You broke open the fountain and the flood; You dried up mighty rivers. 16 The day is Yours, the night also is Yours; You have prepared the light and the sun. 17 You have set all the borders of the earth; You have made summer and winter. 18 Remember this, that the enemy has reproached, O LORD, and that a foolish people has blasphemed Your name. 19 Oh, do not deliver the life of Your turtledove to the wild beast! Do not forget the life of Your poor forever. 20 Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty. 21 Oh, do not let the oppressed return ashamed! Let the poor and needy praise Your name. 22 Arise, O God, plead Your own cause; Remember how the foolish man reproaches You daily. 23 Do not forget the voice of Your enemies; The tumult of those who rise up against You increases continually.
I think it is fair to say that we all are excited as we look around at the conditions of the world today is the fact that the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is soon.
However, along with this good news is the fact that we see the awful things that go along with the end times.
I am bothered by what is happening to our country. One group continues to break the laws of the land and nothing happens to them while innocent people are set up with lies and deceit and they are constantly dealt with severely.
The persecution of innocent people and lawlessness is a big problem but the one thing which that really bothers me is the insult that is against our Holy King. You see it says in the bible which I will point out in a moment that He Is the One Who Is in control of all things. He Is the One Who puts people in authority so when mere men and women pull their evil acts against someone He has put in authority then I see it as a direct offense against my Holy God.
Romans 13: 1 – 2, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.”
Notice the end of verse 2, “They will bring judgment on themselves.” This is why verse 22 stood out to me which says, “Arise, O God, plead Your own cause; Remember how the foolish man reproaches You daily.”
A Contemplation of Asaph.
The Psalm is described as a maschil of Asaph. It is not, however, likely that it was written by Asaph himself as it refers to the destruction of the Sanctuary. We may thus see it as the composition of one or more of ‘the sons of Asaph’, the Temple musicians, those who carried on the family tradition.
Thirteen Psalms are called Maschils, but we do not know precisely why. Some have suggested that it means a didactic (teaching) Psalm but as that is not true of all the Psalms described as Maschils the idea must be partly discounted. It is true that the word ‘maschil’ could relate to the idea of instruction, but it could equally refer to having ‘understanding’ or be indicating that it is a meditation. Thus, applying all three ideas we can see it as instructing us so that we gain an understanding of God and His ways through meditation.
While it does not alter the significance of the Psalm the question naturally arises as which destruction of the Temple is referred to in the Psalm, and we should note that it was clearly a time of great distress.
The basic facts are that:
• The Temple had been despoiled.
• Its carved work had suffered under the axe (possibly to remove the gold inlays).
• The Sanctuary had been set on fire.
• There is a mention of perpetual ruins.
• The dwelling place of YHWH’s Name has been cast to the ground.
This chapter begins with a recognition of guilt. The people recognize that they have been deservedly cast off, and that God has had good cause to be angry with them. They acknowledge that they have failed Him as His people. But they nevertheless call on Him to show mercy on them because they are His sheep, and because they are the people to whom He has given His inheritance. Let him also remember Mount Zion which His dwelling place is, and which these evil enemies have violated. The words read like those of a people still in the land. This would not exclude the time of the Exile, for many did remain, and some may well have been Levites (sons of Asaph). And they may well have made such a plea. But it might be making it less likely.
1 O God, why have You cast us off forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?
Their first appeal is a cry of despair, and basically an admission of guilt (they felt that they had been ‘cast off forever’). They recognized that they had deserved to be ‘cast off, and that God was deservedly angry with them. But being still conscious that they are the people whom He redeemed from Egypt in such a mighty way, they cannot therefore understand why they are cast off forever. Surely, He will forgive those whom He has chosen as His sheep? He has not really cast them off forever? Are they not His sheep whom He had called to dwell in the land? Is He not their Shepherd? Why then does His anger continue to shoulder against them? Amid their distress we find an indication of the faith that they have in God because of past promises. They still feel that they have grounds to expect Him to act for them because He is a merciful God and because He has chosen them. It goes without saying that this can only be if they are truly repentant.
His anger was seen as like a burning fire producing smoke. It had been revealed in the burning down of the Temple and of Jerusalem from which smoke would have arisen as a thick cloud. It had been revealed in the burning of their whole land with its meeting places. Invasions always resulted in fire and thick clouds of smoke.
2 Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, the tribe of Your inheritance, which You have redeemed—This Mount Zion where You have dwelt.
In their anguish they call on Him to remember three things;
First that they are the community (gathering, assembly, congregation) which he obtained of old. As He had said to them before the covenant of Sinai, ‘you shall be My own possession among all peoples --you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19.6).
Second, that they are the people whom He redeemed from Egypt (Exodus 15.13) to be the ‘tribe’ who would enjoy His inheritance (Numbers 26.53).
Third to remember Mount Zion in which He had dwelt. This was the final place that He had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel in which to establish His Name.
We should note that there is no hint in this that they thought that they deserved what they were asking. They knew only too well what they deserved. It is rather a reminder to Him of what He had in His compassion revealed to be His own purpose. It was He Who had made Himself their Shepherd. It was He Who had set them apart as a people. It was He Who had redeemed them for Himself. And it was He Who had chosen to come and dwell among them. Would He not thus continue with His purpose? Their hope was thus in His continuing purpose of love and compassion.
When we have sinned, we come to God on similar terms as they did. We come because we are the people whom He has established as His own (1 Peter 2.9). We come because He has redeemed us through the blood of the cross (Ephesians 1.7; Colossians 1.14; Revelation 5.9). And we come because in His graciousness He has come to dwell within us and among us (2 Corinthians 6.15). We also have no merit of our own.
The people call on God to, as it were, stand up and pull His hands out of His pockets and actively set about putting right ‘all the evil which the enemy had done in the Sanctuary’. What the enemy had done is then portrayed in some detail. It is as the Psalmist considers these things that his plea changes from one which is simply desiring deliverance to one which is concerned for the slight that it has brought on God’s Name.
3 Lift up Your feet to the perpetual desolations. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary.
‘Lift up your feet’ means basically, ‘become active, stride out and do something. And the prayer is that God would look on what the enemy had done to the Sanctuary as it stood there in ‘perpetual ruins’ and do something about it.
4 Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place; They set up their banners for signs. 5 They seem like men who lift up axes among the thick trees. 6 And now they break down its carved work, all at once, with axes and hammers.
In a vivid description seen as taking place at the time when he speaks, the Psalmist depicts their adversaries as breaking in on the worship of Judah in the courts of the Sanctuary (their meeting places) with loud roars, and setting up their own standards, with their idolatrous implications, as signs to be looked to, and then, acting like men who raise their axes exuberantly to attack a great thicket of trees, setting to work on the carved work in the Temple, and breaking it down with hatchets and sledgehammers, despoiling the Temple.
7 They have set fire to Your sanctuary; They have defiled the dwelling place of Your name to the ground.
They then set fire to the Temple and profaned even the Holiest Place where God’s Name dwelt, casting it to the ground. This is the height of their blasphemy. This appears to be a description of the destruction of the Temple in a similar way to Jesus’ description of ‘not one stone being left on another’.
8 They said in their hearts, “Let us destroy them altogether.” They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land.
The enemy had not only done this to the Temple. They had determined in their hearts to make total havoc throughout the land, burning up all the places where men met together to worship God and consider His word. This would enable fathers to fulfil the requirements of the Torah by learning the Torah to teach it to their children.
9 We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet; Nor is there any among us who knows how long.
The consequence of all this was spiritual barrenness. ‘Our signs’ may well have been the regular Feasts and sacrifices and new moons and sabbaths which had now been interrupted or may even have ceased altogether (Lamentations 1.4; 2.6).
The remark of ‘There is no more prophet’ is a stark statement that goes along with the spiritual barrenness previously revealed. It reveals a situation when God’s voice was silent.
This was written towards the end of a period of hopelessness. Such periods would occur after devastating invasions when the people were still reeling and wondering when things would get back to normal. But the main point is that the destruction of the foundations of their religion, whenever it was, had left them empty and void, and without a sign or a word from God. It was a period of spiritual hopelessness.
10 O God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever?
Therefore, their cry was ‘how long?’. How long would God allow His and their enemy to reproach His Name? Would He allow them to blaspheme His name forever by preventing His people from worshipping Him again and by pointing to their success in destroying Yahwism? In their despair God’s people still had their confidence placed in the fact that He could do something, if only He would.
Such situations have occurred for the people of God throughout the centuries, both before and since the coming of Christ. Persecution, destruction of their means of worship, the silencing of prophetic voices, a seeming end to their hopes, with Satan appearing to have prevailed, where things that happened again and again. Many a time the people of God have appeared to be at the end of themselves. But when they felt that they have been able to turn to this Psalm for hope and encouragement. It was the situation reflected again in Revelation 6.10 where the martyred saints also asked, ‘how long?’ It is a reminder that because of our sinfulness God often must withdraw His blessings in order that we might be made to wake up and seek Him again.
11 Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them.
The Psalm will close as it opened with a cry to God for deliverance. Out of their despair sprang faith, a confidence that God could and would do something, however dark the outlook appeared. They knew that their situation arose from the fact that God had drawn back His hand, even His powerful right hand, and had not used it to protect them. And now they called on Him and asked Him why He had done so. We know the answer. It was a time of chastening, and God was seeking to bring them to their senses.
And then they called on God once again to pluck His right hand from His bosom where He was resting it to act with His mighty right hand and consume His and their enemies. But their prayer could only be heard if there was genuine repentance and faith.
What gave them hope and certainty that He could and would do something was their remembrance of the past. The God who had parted the Reed Sea in order to deliver His people, Who had fed them from water creatures and had cleft rocks in the desert so that they could drink and had dried up the Jordan in full flow so that they could pass through, was well able to deliver them now. Why even the day and the night were His for He had created them, and it was He who had established the whole earth and had determined the seasons, things which no man could do. What then was He not able to do?
12 For God Is my King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
The ‘yet’ is a turning point in their praying as they remember back into their past. It was what followed that now gave them hope, memories of what God had done for His people in the past. The ‘my’ is seeing Israel as one people (we could translate as ‘our’). They were reminded that God was Israel’s king of old (Deuteronomy 33.5), and that He had not ceased to be so despite their treatment of Him. And He was not only so but was also a King Who had worked salvation and deliverance in the sight of the whole earth. For He was the great Deliverer from Egypt, and controller of the whole earth.
13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea serpents in the waters. 14 You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces,
and gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
God Is seen as having delivered them from fearsome creatures, as delivering them from the Egyptians, and as delivering them from the unseen forces at work in the world. No matter what they faced, God had dealt with them all.
The ‘You’ here is emphatic. The idea is that none other could have done it. The first line refers to the dividing of the Reed Sea so that the people could pass through, while those who hunted them down were destroyed, even though they had represented mighty Egypt (Exodus 14-15). It indicates His power to deal with their enemies.
The next three lines reveal both His power to deal with fearsome enemies (both supernatural and natural) and at the same time to feed His people through them.
Now let me take a moment and point out the interest in Leviathan and Behemoth. Many biblical scholars teach that these are ancient sea creature and a dinosaur. Like the verse points out to us I am under the opinion that these in fact represent supernatural and natural factors. If you would like to find out more on what I found on these two so called creatures I recommend you find my findings on the book of Job chapters 40 and 41. In this chapter we see it as the Egyptians and other physical enemies of Israel. The pursuing army of Egypt is seen as sea snakes with Egypt as Leviathan (Egypt is elsewhere seen as Rahab, another sea monster), defeated emphatically by God The supernatural factors are spiritual.
Thus, the picture is of great deliverance, and the stamping under foot of all God’s enemies. God had defeated wild beasts, natural enemies, and supernatural enemies all at the same time.
15 You broke open the fountain and the flood; You dried up mighty rivers.
Not only had God delivered His people initially through water, and defeated their enemies, and fed His people in the wilderness, He had also split rocks in the wilderness and produced water for them to drink (Exodus 17.6; Numbers 20.8-13), and had dried up mighty rivers, when He had stopped up the Jordan and its tributaries in full flow so that His people could cross into the land (Joshua 3.15-17).
16 The day is Yours, the night also is Yours; You have prepared the light and the sun. 17 You have set all the borders of the earth; You have made summer and winter.
Furthermore as the Creator of all things He had made and controlled the night and the day and had created the light and the sun which enabled men to live out their lives in bright daylight (Genesis 1.3, 16). For at night men were like moving shadows, and life was limited. And He had determined the extent of the earth, and the seasons which enabled them to grow their crops. Thus as King over all the earth (‘YHWH reigns’) He had been responsible for the whole basis of life. The setting of all the borders of the earth may include not only determining the extent of land in contrast with sea, itself seen as an act of power, but also the setting of the boundaries of the nations. All was in His hands. Such a mighty God could not be restricted.
Encouraged by the thought of how God had delivered His people in the past, and controlled the elements of nature and the disposition of the world, the Psalmist humbles himself and his people before Him (describing them as ‘your poor/lowly ones’) and calls on God to arise and do it again, as He Himself thinks on the way that their enemies have mocked His Name. The Psalmist is now equally concerned with the vindication of God’s reputation.
18 Remember this, that the enemy has reproached, O LORD, and that a foolish people has blasphemed Your name.
He calls on YHWH to remember what the enemy have done. They have brought reproach on His Name. YHWH was God’s covenant name, and the Psalmist is about to call on the covenant. But it is also because it is as YHWH, the God of Israel, that He has been brought into reproach by the enemy in their destroying of His people. Superficially what has happened has represented Him as unable to deliver. Only the discerning would realize that the lack was because of the covenant disobedience of His people. Thus, he wants to stir YHWH into action to clear His Name.
The Psalmist rightly sees the attitude of their enemies as foolish. For he knows that to blaspheme the Name of YHWH can only result in evil consequences because of Who and What YHWH Is. So, his main aim is to awaken YHWH to what the enemy have done to His Names in order to spur Him on to act.
19 Oh, do not deliver the life of Your turtledove to the wild beast! Do not forget the life of Your poor forever.
The Psalmist reminds YHWH that His people are His turtle-dove, that is, they are weak and helpless and dependent on Him, and are seen as precious and beloved in His sight. And he calls on YHWH not to allow His turtledove to fall into the paws of wild beasts (as the Egyptians had). And while it may be that for the moment He has allowed His lowly ones to be captured by the enemy (because of their undeserving), he asks Him not to forget their lives forever. All his emphasis is on their undeserving (they are lowly ones) and on God’s gracious love for them as His weak and helpless ‘turtle-dove’.
20 Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty.
Then he comes to the main point of his argument. Let YHWH have respect to His covenant, the promises that He has made to His people if they would truly be His people. While His people have broken the covenant and ignored it, surely YHWH will not do so, for He Is the One Who ‘will be (Yahweh) what He will be’, the One Who Is sovereign over all. And he stresses how necessary that covenant is for His people, for they live in a world which is full of dark places in which violent men live.
There was, of course, a twofold covenant. The one given to the patriarchs which was unconditional, and the one given at Sinai which was conditional. Here he is basically appealing to the unconditional covenant. Let YHWH respond despite their undeserving.
21 Oh, do not let the oppressed return ashamed! Let the poor and needy praise Your name.
He calls on YHWH for His covenant’s sake not to let those who have been oppressed (His people) return (turn back) ashamed because He has failed to hear them and help them. Rather let them as His lowly and needy people have cause to praise Him because He has delivered them.
There is a reminder in all this of how we should seek God in prayer. Not pointing to our own merit, but admitting our lowliness and, desiring His glory, looking for Him to fulfil His covenant promises because of Who He Is.
22 Arise, O God, plead Your own cause; Remember how the foolish man reproaches You daily. 23 Do not forget the voice of Your enemies; The tumult of those who rise up against You increases continually.
He closes the section as he opened it by calling on God to act, not for their sakes but for His own Name’s sake. Let Him arise and plead His own cause by acting in a way that vindicates Him. Let Him remember the reproaches of the foolish (the enemy) which they utter all day, and act to counter them. Let Him not forget the voice of His adversaries, (the enemy who destroyed His Sanctuary), for their tumult arises against Him and ascends to Him continually. They constantly speak against Him and deride His Name. Let Him therefore hear it and act by delivering His people. Thus, in the end the Psalmist’s expressed concern is for the honor of YHWH’s Name. It hurts him to think that God has been dishonored.
