Psalms 74:1

PSALM 74

A LAMENT FOLLOWING THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

This is another of the Psalms accredited to Asaph. However, "Asaph, like Jeduthun and Heman, became a tribe-name, attaching to all the descendants of the original Asaph, and was equivalent to `the son of Asaph.'"[1]

The occasion for this Psalm has been assigned to three different dates: "These identifications are (1) the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. (2 Kings 24), (2) the suppression of a Jewish insurrection by a Persian King Artaxerxes Ochus in 351 B.C., and (3) the profaning of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C.[2] Despite the skillful arguments of Delitzsch who favored the Maccabean date, our conclusion is that only the total destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 fills the bill as the correct date for this psalm.

There are apparently some powerful arguments against this in the psalm itself, which we shall discuss in the notes below.

The determining factor in this question is that this psalm represents the temple itself as having been burned; and that definitely did not occur either in the times of Shishak or those of the Maccabeans.

An example of how scholars can go "overboard" for an incorrect conclusion, based upon a few facts, is that of Addis.

"Synagogues are everywhere in the land, and no prophet has arisen... Everything points to the composition of the Psalm between 168 B.C. and 165 B.C."[3]

Such a conclusion is in error, because the Second Temple was never burned, until the rebuilt version of it by Herod the Great was burned by the soldiers of Vespasian and Titus in the year 70 A.D. Addis' arguments, however, are important, and we shall examine them more closely in the text below.

A very significant peculiarity of this psalm was pointed out by Spurgeon. "There is not a single mention of either personal or national sin in this psalm; and yet one cannot doubt that the writer was fully aware of the sins and iniquities of Israel that had brought all of this misery upon them."[4]

Leupold, Rawlinson and Ash, along with most present day scholars, agree that the most likely date is that following the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. As McCullough stated it, "None of the suggested dates is free from difficulty, but the first (that of 587 B.C.) is most likely."[5]

Psalms 74:1-2

"O God, why hast thou cast us off forever?

Why dost thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?

Remember thy congregation, which thou hast gotten of old,

Which thou hast redeemed to be the tribe of thine inheritance;

And mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt."

The plight of Israel at this time was indeed pitiful. Their sins had finally reached a level that required their captivity and the dissolution of their earthly kingdom. The true people of God, after this time, were no longer to be found in the land of Israel, but in Babylon. The Israelites still remaining in "the land" did not understand this.

"Why hast thou cast us off forever" (Psalms 74:1)? The "kingdom" in the sense of an earthly monarchy, was indeed cast off forever. It had never been God's will in the first place; and the reprobacy, idolatry, and wickedness of Israel's kings had at last made their removal absolutely necessary.

"Remember thy congregation" (Psalms 74:2). God did indeed remember "the congregation," which at that time had been transferred to Babylon; but the psalmist was apparently still in Jerusalem, from which God's presence had been removed, and in which the temple itself had been profaned, plundered, desecrated and burned to the ground. God was forever finished with that "earthly kingdom" of Israel. Pitiful indeed was the plight of the few true children of God who, along with the psalmist, were still left among that conceited, rebellious, and soon to be destroyed residue of the people that yet remained in Jerusalem.