Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 74:4 - 74:4

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 74:4 - 74:4


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The poet now more minutely describes how the enemy has gone on. Since קֹדֶשׁ in Psa 74:3 is the Temple, מֹועֲדֶיךָ in Psa 74:4 ought likewise to mean the Temple with reference to the several courts; but the plural would here (cf. Psa 74:8) be misleading, and is, too, only a various reading. Baer has rightly decided in favour of מועדֶך;

(Note: The reading מעודיך is received, e.g., by Elias Hutter and Nissel; the Targum translates it, Kimchi follows it in his interpretation, and Abraham of Zante follows it in his paraphrase; it is tolerably widely known, but, according to the lxx and Syriac versions and MSS, it is to be rejected.)

מֹועֵד, as in Lam 2:6., is the instituted (Num 17:1-13 :19 [4]) place of God's intercourse with His congregation (cf. Arab. mı̂‛âd, a rendezvous). What Jeremiah says in Lam 2:7 (cf. שׁאג, Jer 2:15) is here more briefly expressed. By אֹותֹתָם (Psa 74:4) we must not understand military insignia; the scene of the Temple and the supplanting of the Israelitish 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 (Exo 31:13); such heathen אֹתֹות, which were thrust upon the Temple and the congregation of Jahve as henceforth the lawful ones, were those which are set forth in 1 Macc. 1:45-49, and more particularly the so-called abomination of desolation mentioned in v. 54 of the same chapter. With יִוָּדַע (Psa 74:5) the terrible scene which was at that time taking place before their eyes (Psa 79:10) is introduced. כְּמֵבִיא is the subject; it became visible, tangible, noticeable, i.e., it looked, and one experienced it, as if a man caused the axe to enter into the thicket of the wood, i.e., struck into or at it right and left. The plural קַדֻּמֹּות forces itself into the simile because it is the many heathen warriors who are, as in Jer 46:22., likened to these hewers of wood. Norzi calls the Kametz of בסבָךְ־עץ Kametz chatuph; the combining form would then be a contraction of סְבֹךְ (Ewald, Olshausen), for the long ā of סְבָךְ does not admit of any contraction. According to another view it is to be read bi-sbāch-etz, as in Est 4:8 kethāb-hadāth with counter-tone Metheg beside the long vowel, as e.g., עֵֽץ־הַגָּן, Gen 2:16). The poet follows the work of destruction up to the destroying stroke, which is introduced by the ועת (perhaps וְעֵת, Kerî וְעַתָּה), which arrests one's attention. In Psa 74:5 the usual, unbroken quiet is depicted, as is the heavy Cyclopean labour in the Virgilian illi inter sese, etc.; in jahalomûn, Psa 74:6 (now and then pointed jahlomûn), we hear the stroke of the uplifted axes, which break in pieces the costly carved work of the Temple. The suffix of פִּתּוּחֶיהָ (the carved works thereof) refers, according to the sense, to מועדך. The lxx, favouring the Maccabaean interpretation, renders: ἐξέκοψαν τάς θύρας αὐτῆς (פְּתָחֶיהָ). This shattering of the panelling is followed in Psa 74:7 by the burning, first of all, as we may suppose, of this panelling itself so far as it consists of wood. The guaranteed reading here is מקדשֶׁךְ, not מקדשֶׁיךְ. שִׁלַּח בָּאֵשׁ signifies to set on fire, immittere igni, differing from שִׁלַּח אֵשׁ בְּ, to set fire to, immittere ignem. On לָאָרֶץ חִלְּלוּ, cf. Lam 2:2; Jer 19:13. Hitzig, following the lxx, Targum, and Jerome, derives the exclamation of the enemies נִינָם from נִין: their whole generation (viz., we will root out)! But נין is posterity, descendants; why therefore only the young and not the aged? And why is it an expression of the object and not rather of the action, the object of which would be self-evident? נִינָם is fut. Kal of יָנָה, here = Hiph. הֹונָה, to force, oppress, tyrannize over, and like אָנַס, to compel by violence, in later Hebrew. נֵינֵם (from יִינֶה, like יִיפֶה) is changed in pause into נִינָם; cf. the future forms in Num 21:30; Exo 34:19, and also in Psa 118:10-12. Now, after mention has been made of the burning of the Temple framework, מֹֽועֲדֵי־אֵל cannot denote the place of the divine manifestation after its divisions (Hengstenberg), still less the festive assemblies (Böttcher), which the enemy could only have burnt up by setting fire to the Temple over their heads, and כל does not at all suit this. The expression apparently has reference to synagogues (and this ought not to be disputed), as Aquila and Symmachus render the word. For there is no room for thinking of the separate services conducted by the prophets in the northern kingdom (2Ki 4:23), because this kingdom no longer existed at the time this Psalm was written; nor of the בָּמֹות, the burning down of which no pious Israelite would have bewailed; nor of the sacred places memorable from the early history of Israel, which are nowhere called מועדים, and after the founding of the central sanctuary appear only as the seats of false religious rites. The expression points (like בֵּית וַעַד, Sota ix. 15) to places of assembly for religious purposes, to houses for prayer and teaching, that is to say, to synagogues - a weighty instance in favour of the Maccabaean origin of the Psalm.