Psalms 74

Psalms 74:3

I said - I fully resolved. Take heed - To order all my actions right, and particularly to govern my tongue.

Psalms 74:4

Dumb - Two words put together, expressing the same thing, to aggravate or increase it. I held - I forbear to speak, what I justly might, lest I should break forth into some indecent expressions. Stirred - My silence did not assuage my grief, but increase it.

Psalms 74:6

My end - Make me sensible of the shortness and uncertainly of life, and the near approach of death.

Psalms 74:7

Before thee - If compared with thee, and with thy everlasting duration.

Psalms 74:8

Vain shew - Heb. in a shadow or image; in an imaginary rather than a real life: in the pursuit of vain imaginations, in which there is nothing solid or satisfactory: man in and his life, and all his happiness in this world, are rather appearances and dreams, than truths and realities. Disquieted - Heb. They make a noise, bustling, or tumult, with unwearied industry seeking for riches, and troubling and vexing both themselves and others in the pursuit of them.

Psalms 74:9

Mow Lord - Seeing this life and all its enjoyments are so vain and short. My hope - I will seek for happiness no where but in God.

Psalms 74:12

Remove - Take off the judgment which thou hast inflicted upon me. I am - Help me before I am utterly lost.

Psalms 74:13

Beauty - His comeliness and all his excellencies or felicities. Moth - As a moth consumeth a garment, to which God compares himself and his judgments, secretly and insensibly consuming a people, Isaiah 51:8.

Psalms 74:14

A stranger - I am only in my journey or passage to my real home, which is in the other world.

Psalms 74:15

No more - Among the living, or in this world.

Psalms 74:17

No more - Among the living, or in this world.

Psalms 74:18

Pit - Desperate dangers and calamities. Rock - A place of strength and safety. Established - Kept me from falling into mischief.

Psalms 74:19

And fear - Shall stand in awe of that God, whom they see to have so great power, either to save or to destroy.

Psalms 74:20

The proud - Or, the mighty, the great and proud potentates of the world, to whom most men are apt to look and trust. Turn - From God, in whom alone they ought to trust. To lies - To lying vanities, such as worldly power and wisdom, and riches, and all other earthly things, or persons, in which men are prone to trust: which are called lies, because they promise more than they perform.

Psalms 74:21

Many - This verse seems to be interposed as a wall of partition, between that which David speaks in his own person, and that which he speaks in the person of the Messiah, in the following verses.

Psalms 74:22

Sacrifice - These and the following words, may in an improper sense belong to the time of David; when God might be said, not to desire or require legal sacrifices comparatively. Thou didst desire obedience rather than sacrifices, but in a proper sense, they belong only to the person and times of the Messiah, and so the sense is, God did not desire or require them, for the satisfaction of his own justice, and the expiation of mens sins, which could not possibly be done by the blood of bulls or goats, but only by the blood of Christ, which was typified by them, and which Christ came into the world to shed, in pursuance of his father’s will, as it here follows, ver.7,8. So here is a prediction concerning the cessation of the legal sacrifice, and the substitution of a better instead of them. Opened - Heb. bored. I have devoted myself to thy perpetual service, and thou hast accepted of me as such, and signified so much by the boring of mine ears, according to the law and custom in that case, Exodus 21:5,6. The seventy Jewish interpreters, whom the apostle follows, Hebrews 10:5, translate these words, a body hast thou prepared me.

Psalms 74:23

Them - These words literally and truly belong to Christ, and the sense is this; seeing thou requirest a better sacrifice than those of the law, lo, I offer myself to come, and I will in due time come, into the world, as this phrase is explained in divers places of scripture, and particularly Hebrews 10:5, where this place is expressly applied to Christ. Volume - These two words, volume and book are used of any writing, and both express the same thing. Now this volume of the book is the law of Moses, which is commonly and emphatically called the book, and was made up in the form of a roll or volume, as the Hebrew books generally were. And so this place manifestly points to Christ, concerning whom much is said in the books of Moses.