Psalm 74

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Remember Your congregation

¹ O Elohim, why have You cast us off forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture? ² Remember Your congregation, which You acquired of old, which You redeemed to be the tribe of Your inheritance; this Mount Zion, where You have dwelt. ³ Lift up Your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has done every evil in the sanctuary.

⁴ Your foes have roared in the midst of Your meeting place; they have set up their own signs as signs. ⁵ They seemed like men who lift up axes against a thicket of trees. ⁶ And now all its carved work they break down with hatchet and hammers. ⁷ They have set Your sanctuary on fire; to the ground they have profaned the dwelling place of Your name. ⁸ They said in their heart, "Let us crush them altogether." They have burned all the meeting places of El in the land. ⁹ We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long.

¹⁰ How long, O Elohim, will the foe reproach? Will the enemy despise Your name forever? ¹¹ Why do You draw back Your hand, even Your right hand? Draw it out from Your bosom and destroy them!

Elohim my King from of old

¹² Yet Elohim 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 monsters on the waters. ¹⁴ You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You gave him as food to the people of the desert. ¹⁵ You split open spring and torrent; You dried up ever-flowing rivers. ¹⁶ Yours is the day, Yours also the night; You have established the light and the sun. ¹⁷ You have set all the boundaries of the earth; summer and winter, You have formed them.

Arise, O Elohim, plead Your cause

¹⁸ Remember this: the enemy has reproached Yahweh, and a foolish people has despised Your name. ¹⁹ Do not give the soul of Your turtledove to the wild beast; do not forget the life of Your afflicted forever. ²⁰ Look to the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the haunts of violence. ²¹ Let not the oppressed turn back in shame; let the afflicted and needy praise Your name. ²² Arise, O Elohim, plead Your own cause; remember how the fool reproaches You all the day. ²³ Do not forget the voice of Your foes, the tumult of those who rise up against You, which ascends continually.

Notes

• 74:1 Title: the title, maskil le'asaf, stands at the start of verse 1 in the Hebrew, as in 73:1; the TRB puts it in the title line, so the verse numbers are the same as in Hebrew Bibles. On "Maskil" see the note at 32:1, and on Asaph the note at 50:1. The psalm mourns the sanctuary burned and broken by enemies (verses 3-8). Most connect it with the Babylonian destruction in the sixth century BC, when the king's officer "burned the house of Yahweh" (2 Kings 25:9); some have thought of a later desecration of the temple. The cry "why… forever?" (verses 1, 10-11) is not unbelief: the people appeal to what Elohim has done before, His congregation "acquired of old" (verse 2; compare Exodus 15:16, "the people… whom You have acquired") and His mighty works (verses 12-17).
• 74:9 "Signs" (otot) links verses 4 and 9: the enemy has set up "their own signs," perhaps military standards or the emblems of their gods, in the place where Elohim met His people, while Israel sees none of "our signs," the tokens of Elohim's presence and help. "There is no longer any prophet": no word from Elohim tells how long the ruin will last, as in the days when "the word of Yahweh was rare" (1 Samuel 3:1). The "meeting places of El" (verse 8; mo'ade-El) are probably the places where Israel gathered to worship; the same word mo'ed is used for "Your meeting place" in verse 4 and for the "tent of meeting."
• 74:13 Verses 12-17 recall Elohim's works "from of old." "Sea monsters" is tanninim (see the note at Job 7:12), and Leviathan is the great creature of the sea (see the notes at Job 3:8 and 41:1). Here the pictures point first to the Exodus: "You divided the sea," as when at the sea "the waters were divided" (Exodus 14:21); the prophets also call Egypt and Pharaoh a sea monster (Isaiah 51:9-10; Ezekiel 29:3). Many scholars note that older Canaanite poems from Ugarit tell of a seven-headed sea serpent; the psalm uses such pictures to say that Elohim alone rules the deep, and that what He crushed became food in the wilderness (verse 14). Verses 16-17 then move to creation: day and night, the light and the sun (compare "the two great lights," Genesis 1:16), "summer and winter" (Genesis 8:22).
• 74:19 The two halves of the verse play on one word, chayyah: "the wild beast" (literally "the living creature") and "the life" of Yahweh's afflicted. Israel is pictured as His turtledove, small and defenseless among beasts of prey. The plea of verse 20, "Look to the covenant," rests the whole prayer on Elohim's own promise, as He said He would remember His covenant even in exile (Leviticus 26:44-45).

Psalm 73 · Psalm 75

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