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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 74:12 - 74:12
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With this prayer for the destruction of the enemies by God's interposition closes the first half of the Psalm, which has for its subject-matter the crying contradiction between the present state of things and God's relationship to Israel. The poet now draws comfort by looking back into the time when God as Israel's King unfolded the rich fulness of His salvation everywhere upon the earth, where Israel's existence was imperilled. בֶּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ, not only within the circumference of the Holy Land, but, e.g., also within that of Egypt (Exo 8:18-22). The poet has Egypt directly in his mind, for there now follows first of all a glance at the historical (Psa 74:13-15), and then at the natural displays of God's power (Psa 74:16, Psa 74:17). Hengstenberg is of opinion that Psa 74:13-15 also are to be understood in the latter sense, and appeals to Job 26:11-13. But just as Isaiah (Isa 51:9, cf. Psa 27:1) transfers these emblems of the omnipotence of God in the natural world to His proofs of power in connection with the history of redemption which were exhibited in the case of a worldly power, so does the poet here also in Psa 74:13-15. The תַּנִּיּן (the extended saurian) is in Isaiah, as in Ezekiel (הַתַּנִּים, Psa 29:3; Psa 32:2), an emblem of Pharaoh and of his kingdom; in like manner here the leviathan is the proper natural wonder of Egypt. As a water-snake or a crocodile, when it comes up with its head above the water, is killed by a powerful stroke, did God break the heads of the Egyptians, so that the sea cast up their dead bodies (Exo 14:30). The צִיִּים, the dwellers in the steppe, to whom these became food, are not the Aethiopians (lxx, Jerome), or rather the Ichthyophagi (Bocahrt, Hengstenberg), who according to Agatharcides fed ἐκ τῶν ἐκριπτομένων εἰς τὴν χέρσον κητῶν, but were no cannibals, but the wild beasts of the desert, which are called עם, as in Pro 30:25. the ants and the rock-badgers. לציים is a permutative of the notion לעם, which was not completed: to a (singular) people, viz., to the wild animals of the steppe. Psa 74:15 also still refers not to miracles of creation, but to miracles wrought in the course of the history of redemption; Psa 74:15 refers to the giving of water out of the rock (Psa 78:15), and Psa 74:15 to the passage through the Jordan, which was miraculously dried up (הֹובַשְׁתָּ, as in Jos 2:10; Jos 4:23; Jos 5:1). The object מַעְיָן וָנַחַל is intended as referring to the result: so that the water flowed out of the cleft after the manner of a fountain and a brook. נַֽהֲרֹות are the several streams of the one Jordan; the attributive genitive אֵיתן describe them as streams having an abundance that does not dry up, streams of perennial fulness. The God of Israel who has thus marvellously made Himself known in history is, however, the Creator and Lord of all created things. Day and night and the stars alike are His creatures. In close connection with the night, which is mentioned second, the moon, the מָאֹור of the night, precedes the sun; cf. Psa 8:4, where כֹּונֵן is the same as הֵכִין in this passage. It is an error to render thus: bodies of light, and more particularly the sun; which would have made one expect מְאֹורֹות before the specializing Waw. גְּבוּלֹות are not merely the bounds of the land towards the sea, Jer 5:22, but, according to Deu 32:8; Act 17:26, even the boundaries of the land in themselves, that is to say, the natural boundaries of the inland country. קַיִץ וָחֹרֶף are the two halves of the year: summer including spring (אָבִיב), which begins in Nisan, the spring-month, about the time of the vernal equinox, and autumn including winter (צְתָו), after the termination of which the strictly spring vegetation begins (Son 2:11). The seasons are personified, and are called God's formations or works, as it were the angels of summer and of winter.