Psalms 74

God, why have you thrown us off for good? Why does your anger burn against the sheep of your own pasture?

1O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?

Note"Your anger burns" translates a Hebrew image of anger smoking, smoke rising from a fire that has been left to smolder. The picture is of God's nose or face steaming with rage. "Sheep of your pasture" is standard ancient language for a people and their ruler: a king was a shepherd, and his subjects were the flock he was supposed to guard and feed.

2Remember the people you gathered as your own, the ones you bought long ago. Remember the tribe you claimed as your inheritance and set free, and Mount Zion, where you have lived.

2Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt.

NoteThree legal or commercial words pile up here. "Bought" and "set free" (KJV "purchased" and "redeemed") both come from the world of buying back property or paying to release a slave or a relative from debt; used of God and Israel they point back to the escape from Egypt. "Inheritance" is the language of land handed down in a family, so calling a people God's inheritance means they are his permanent, non-transferable property. Where the KJV has "the rod of thine inheritance," the Hebrew word means both a measuring rod and a tribe, the two senses run together, because tribes were defined by the land measured out to them. Mount Zion is the ridge in Jerusalem on which the temple stood.

3Walk over to these ruins that stay ruined, and look at all the damage the enemy has done inside the holy place.

3Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.

Note"The holy place" (KJV "sanctuary") is the temple in Jerusalem, the walled complex containing the building where God was understood to be present, along with its courts and altar. The psalm never names the attacking army; readers have most often connected the scene to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587/586 BC, but the psalm itself leaves the enemy unidentified.

4Your enemies roared inside the place where your people met with you. They set up their own battle flags there as their signs.

4Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs.

NoteThe KJV's "ensigns" are military standards, poles carrying an army's emblem, often the image or symbol of the god it fought under. Planting them in a captured shrine was the normal way an ancient army announced that the place and its god now belonged to the victor. The bitter point is that these signs are standing where the signs of Israel's own worship should be (see verse 9).

5It was like men who make a name for themselves swinging axes in a thick stand of trees.

5A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.

NoteThe Hebrew of verses 5 and 6 is damaged or garbled, and no translation of verse 5 is certain; ancient and modern versions differ widely. The general sense that most translators reconstruct is a comparison: the soldiers hacking at the temple's woodwork look like woodcutters swinging axes in a forest.

6And now they smash all the carved woodwork of the building with axes and hammers.

6But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.

NoteThe temple's interior was lined with cedar and olive wood carved with palm trees, flowers and winged figures, and overlaid with gold (described in 1 Kings 6). Stripping and smashing this panelling would both destroy the building and strip out the gold.

7They set your holy place on fire. They pulled the place where your name lives down to the ground and left it unclean.

7They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.

Note"The place where your name lives" is a fixed Hebrew way of speaking about the temple. To put your name on a place was to claim ownership of it and to be present there in person through your reputation; the phrase avoids saying that God was confined to the building. "Left it unclean" (KJV "defiled") is ritual language: the site was rendered unfit for worship, a state that could only be undone by specific ceremonies, not by cleaning.

8They said to themselves, "Let's crush them all together." They burned down every place in the land where people met with God.

8They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.

NoteThe KJV's "synagogues" is an anachronism, synagogues as buildings did not yet exist. The Hebrew says "the meeting places of God" in the land; what these were is disputed. They may have been local shrines or assembly sites outside Jerusalem, or the phrase may be a plural of grandeur for the temple itself.

9We see no signs from you. There is no prophet left. And no one among us knows how long this will last.

9We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.

Note"Signs" here means visible evidence that God is still acting, a miracle, an answered request, a message through a prophet. The word deliberately echoes the enemy's "signs" in verse 4: the invaders' battle flags are on display, and God's are not. "No one knows how long" is the complaint that no prophet is left who can put a limit on the disaster.

10God, how long will the enemy insult you? Will the enemy speak against your name forever?

10O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?

11Why do you hold back your hand, your strong right hand? Pull it out from the fold of your robe and act.

11Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? pluck it out of thy bosom.

NoteThe right hand stands for a person's power in action, since most people fight and work with it. Ancient robes had a deep fold across the chest used as a pocket, and a hand tucked into it is a hand deliberately kept out of use. The image is of God sitting with his arms folded while his people are attacked.

12But God has been my King from long ago, working rescue right here in the middle of the earth.

12For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.

Note"In the middle of the earth" is literal, and the point is publicity, not geography: the rescues being remembered were done out in the open where everyone could see them, not in private.

13You split the sea open by your strength. You smashed the heads of the sea monsters in the water.

13Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.

NoteThe Hebrew word behind the KJV's "dragons" is tanninim, large sea creatures or sea monsters. Verses 13 and 14 use imagery shared across the ancient Near East, in which the world began with a god defeating a monster of the sea and its many heads. The Hebrew poets used the same picture, and it also runs alongside the memory of the sea splitting at the escape from Egypt, the two are hard to separate, and the psalm does not separate them.

14You crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures that live in the desert.

14Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

NoteLeviathan is a many-headed sea monster known outside the Bible from Canaanite poetry found at Ugarit, where a similar creature with seven heads is defeated by a god. The second line is obscure in Hebrew: the phrase translated "the creatures that live in the desert" could refer to desert animals, to sea creatures, or to a group of people, and translators disagree on all three.

15You broke open springs and streams. You dried up rivers that had never stopped flowing.

15Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.

Note"You broke open springs and streams" recalls water struck from a rock in the desert; "you dried up rivers that had never stopped flowing" recalls the sea and the Jordan being pushed back so the people could cross. The same power that opens water can also shut it off.

16The day belongs to you, and the night belongs to you too. You put the light and the sun in place.

16The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.

NoteThe KJV's "the light and the sun" is a fair rendering of the Hebrew, which pairs an ordinary word for light-giver with the word for sun. Because day and night have just been named together, many translators take the first word to mean the moon; others keep the more general "light." Both readings are defensible.

17You set every boundary on the earth. You made summer and winter.

17Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter.

Note"Boundaries of the earth" refers to the fixed limits of the created world, the lines separating sea from dry land and the edges of the inhabited world, and the summer-and-winter pairing likewise stands for the fixed order of the seasons. The point of these verses is that the God being addressed is the one who set the whole system running.

18Remember this, LORD: the enemy has mocked you, and a foolish people has insulted your name.

18Remember this, that the enemy hath reproached, O LORD, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name.

Note"Foolish" here does not mean unintelligent. The Hebrew word describes someone morally worthless, coarse, godless, contemptuous of what others hold sacred. It is a judgment on character, not on intelligence.

19Do not hand the life of your dove over to the wild beasts. Do not forget the lives of your suffering people forever.

19O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever.

NoteThe KJV's "turtledove" is a small wild dove, a stock image for something defenseless with no way to fight back. The line has a second uncertainty: the Hebrew word rendered "wild beasts" can also mean "multitude" or "living creature," which is why the KJV has "the multitude of the wicked" and other versions have "beasts." The two halves of the verse are also built on the same pattern, so "the life of your dove" and "the lives of your suffering people" refer to the same thing.

20Pay attention to the covenant, the binding agreement you made, because the dark corners of the land are full of places where violence is done.

20Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.

NoteThe covenant is the formal agreement between God and Israel, drawn up in the style of ancient treaties between a great king and a lesser one, with sworn commitments on both sides. Asking God to "pay attention to" it is asking him to honor his own side of a contract. "Dark corners of the land" may mean unlit hiding places where violent men operate, or the whole land now sunk into darkness, the Hebrew supports both.

21Do not let people who are crushed go away in shame. Let the poor and needy praise your name.

21O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name.

22Get up, God, and argue your own case. Remember how the fool mocks you all day long.

22Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.

23Do not forget the shouting of your enemies. The uproar of those who rise against you keeps growing louder.

23Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.