Psalms 74

Psalms 74:1-23

The enemy being God’s enemy a plea for deliverance. Maskil of Asaph. In the second psalm of the Third Book we have the enemy in the sanctuary, and the destruction of that with which all blessing for the nation was connected, around which its religious life clustered and intertwined itself. Thus the desolation of the sanctuary was the casting off of the people of God, -the writing Lo-Ammi on them. It is difficult for us as Christians to put ourselves into the position of a man of that dispensation, where all spiritual blessings were sealed and symbolized to them by outward means. To say, “I am continually with Thee,” was itself comparatively easy while Jehovah’s tent was in their midst; but with the sanctuary desolated, how different would this be! Yet this might be used of God to bring the individual soul, after all, nearer to Him, -to make faith more fully aware of that personal link with Him which never could be broken. In Judaism, with all things right, the personal link founded itself upon and grew out of the corporate one.

In Christianity, where things are right, the personal link is the foundation of all, and it is the union of those who believe which forms the body. The Judaized, ritualistic Christianity reverts to the old order, which was but probationary, and leaves the soul’s personal interests secondary and doubtful. God, to bring His people into the blessings He designs for them; suffers the collapse of the Jewish system. That which was of course on the one hand the penalty of their national sins (and indeed apostasy), becomes in the mercy of God, through individual exercise and the conviction of legal unrighteousness, a wholesome and effective discipline for the remnant of His ancient people, who find their way to Him. not on the ground of the Jewish covenant, but as mere “sinners of the Gentiles.” We have had their picture before us in the touching history of Ruth. No wonder, therefore, that this is another Maskil psalm, -a special “instruction” for Israel in the last days; although it needs for full understanding to be put in connection with the thirty-second psalm, which as the first of these maskilim is the beginning of all true intelligence, and in living relation to them all. (See Notes.)

1. The psalm begins with a cry to God, as thus (as a people) abandoned by Him. They are -not “forever,” as if they were predicting the future, but “perpetually,” that is, as a matter of day by day experience, -forsaken of Him. They beseech Him; as it were, to “lift His feet,” that is to come and look at these perpetual desolations: they are indeed the terrible and demonstrative proof of their abandonment; for they are the ruins of His own dwelling-place among them. But who could have accomplished this, so long as He owned it as that in any wise? how impossible for an enemy to prevail against God! But they are “the sheep of His pasture,” whom He has thus forsaken! Not that by this is meant to assert any righteousness on their part. It is not that they have been tractable, docile, obedient to government: who could assert this for them? No, it is privilege that they are thinking of, -of His provision for them; of that into which He had brought them, little as they might have responded to His care. They were His assembly, His in a relationship which Himself had formed with them: for He had purchased them; He had redeemed them: whatever they might be, would the unrepenting One deny His work! He had chosen Zion and dwelt there: could He altogether forsake it? Thus we see that there is no self-righteousness in this plea that is made with God. It is really founded on that covenant name, Jehovah, though this does not, with good reason, appear. But in the power of that name it was that He redeemed them out of Egypt at the first. He will be true to it: He will act according to His own nature, not as if He repented, or changed because men changed. And this ground taken is really that of grace -of the thirty-second psalm -of purchase and redemption, which implies the putting away of sin.
2. But the psalmist goes on to picture the enemy’s work in all its desperate profanity as against God. Not the least sign was there of fear, or of regard: Thine adversaries roar in the midst of Thy place of assembly." There is worse abomination: there, where the tokens have been seen of the worship of the true God only, “they set up their signs as signs.” “By ‘signs,’” says Delitzsch, “we must not understand military insignia; the scene of the Temple and the supplanting of the Israelite’s national insignia to be found there, by the substitution of other insignia, requires that the word should have the religious reference in which it is used of circumcision and of the Sabbath (Exodus 22:13); such heathen ‘signs’ which were thrust upon the Temple and congregation of Jehovah as henceforth the lawful ones were those which are set forth in 1Ma 1:45-49, and more particularly the so-called abomination of desolation ’ mentioned in verse 54 of the same chapter.” The application therefore to the time of the end, to which all these psalms look forward, is evident. Mere malice seems to guide the hands and strengthen the arms of the invaders of the holy places. They seem like men leveling trees in a thicket; but no, it is the carved work of the sanctuary which is ruthlessly demolished with axes and hammers. Then they set it on fire and burn it profanely to the ground. And this flame spreads far and wide throughout the land against every place of gathering that owns the Name of the “Mighty One,” thus assailed by the pitiful weak arms of men His creatures. And who knows the limit? There is no prophet any more: there is none who knows how long. But here the extremity of evil rouses afresh the appeal to God, who does know.
3. He must appear; He must vindicate Himself, for His name is openly reproached. The fool scoffs at it; and though he show himself by this a “fool,” yet how can God suffer it? “Why withdrawest Thou Thy hand?” aye, “Thy right hand?” why is the blow, which seems so often about to fall, so constantly delayed? “Get it ready from inside Thy bosom!”
4. The psalmist now goes back to the history of old, to comfort himself with the experience of God’s wonders in behalf of the people, when He led them out of Egypt into this very land, where now so terrible a calamity has fallen upon them. “For God is my King of old,” he says, “working deliverances in the midst of the earth,” -there where the eyes of men would be most upon them. Egypt, of which he goes on to speak, was such a place; and the haughty king of it was just the person in whom God could make His power known, and declare His name throughout all the earth. “Thou didst in Thy might cleave asunder the sea: Thou brakest the heads of the monsters on the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan* in pieces: and gavest him for food to a people, -dwellers in the desert.” These last, spite of the objection that the word used only conveys the thought of animals of the desert, surely refers to Israel; to whom, though for a time only dwellers in the wilderness, their enemies became a spoil. Similarly, Caleb and Joshua speak of the Canaanites afterwards: “they shall be food for us” (Numbers 14:9); and the words “to a people” seem to be put to guard us from the usual meaning. Delitzsch urges the application of “a people” to the ants in Proverbs 30:25; but the figurative use is there quite plain, while here it would have no meaning. Israel’s difficulties only become God’s opportunities; their adversaries only furnish them with food: “happy are the people that are in such a case!” but so it is with all the people of God.
   The experiences of the onward way are given only in two instances, in some sort evidently contrasted with each other, and chosen on that account, to show nature’s various acting under the power of God. In the first instance in the presence of human need, a “place of springs and brooks” is cleft in the flinty rock, and the people are nourished from the barren breast of the desert. In the other case the impetuous Jordan -no winter-torrent merely, and at its flood-tide -is dammed back and dries up. The long journey ends with the same display of power with which it had begun. From these special interventions of God in history, the psalmist passes on to His general and orderly government in creation. Israel’s God is the Creator; and His general government is in harmony with His gracious relationship to His people. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera, and all things work together for good to them that love Him. And yet no less does He make His sun to rise upon the evil and upon the good, and send His rain upon the just and unjust. These things are, of course, in no wise contradictory, for it is unbelief itself which makes that which otherwise would be blessing turn to its very opposite. So Christ in the world, in fashion as a man, was fullest, richest blessing for every one, the source of all blessing: yet men stumbled over Him, and to that, says the apostle, (1 Peter 2:8,) “they were appointed.” There can be no blessing for faith, but unbelief will stumble over it.

In the nature of things, faith and unbelief being contraries, there can be nothing that shall be blessing for faith, but unbelief shall take it for the opposite; and He who appoints, therefore, the blessing for faith, appoints thereby the stumbling-block for unbelief. How terrible a thing is sin, then! But to know that our Father is the Lord of heaven and earth, what unspeakable joy! The day and the night are His alike; and the night unveils a peopled heavens, which even the glory of the day, as that, shuts out. So it has been for us spiritually, as we know. The very going down of Eden glory has but been the occasion of the display of manifold glory. And for us all the night of sorrow has revealed the luminaries with which God has lighted it. For us the day comes only with the sun: it is not earth-manufacture but heaven’s gift. The next verse, according to its number, speaks of limits. In a world of contraries, and of perpetual conflict, what need for One who shall put limits to this. The limits of the land itself are in this way fixed by God, and a little knowledge of physical geography will teach us its importance. Compare land-locked Siberia, with its mountains cutting off the south, and the countries laved by the currents from the equator. And this therefore, is intimately connected with that “arrangement” of summer and autumn, so necessary to man’s subsistence. When the expected time of blessing for the earth shall come, it may take but an extra throe of earthquake to send man’s wheat-harvests far up towards the pole!*
Thank God, these physical limits are but signs of power in His hand used in other than material things to restrain and bound; and so we are to read them. 5. From this the psalm goes on to appeal to this strong and stable government of God for recompense to those that are His adversaries as well as theirs, -theirs even on His account. The occasion calls for His intervention now. It is Jehovah Himself whom the enemy reproaches! it is that glorious and terrible Name that the fool scorns and defies. Then with Israel’s Redeemer the psalmist pleads that it is His turtle-dove -defenceless, and as far as the enemy is concerned, innocent -that is in danger. Can He give it up to men inspired in common only by their lusts? -His community, now in a common condition, indeed, in their affliction: can they be perpetually forgotten?
Their hope, their refuge, still could be the “covenant.” Not, indeed, that terrible legal one which they had violated, and which pleaded only against them; but rather that, back centuries before Sinai, and which in its sign of circumcision spoke of the incapacity of the flesh to accomplish anything towards the fulfilment of the divine promise. Like their father Abraham, with his “body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old,” they could still believe in the God of resurrection, and fall back upon that “covenant of promise” given, when as yet there was no law to saddle it with conditions (Galatians 3:15-17). Thus in all their forlorn state they could rise to be truly children of their father Abraham; and the divine mercy had here foreseen and provided for the destitution and helplessness in which they are now found. “How good is the God we adore!” Though, therefore, in the darkened earth, the habitations of violence are everywhere round about, their need shall be an effectual plea with One able to show Himself fully out to such humbled ones. They can plead that the oppressed shall not turn back ashamed, -that the poor and needy shall be made to praise His Name. And again that brings back the realization of how the fool is scoffing at it. Let Jehovah plead, then, His own cause, and remember these reproaches, in which surely in divine government the end must be reached. The tumult of rebellion rising up continually to heaven challenges the power of God to show itself supreme above it.