Psalms 74:20

"Have respect unto the covenant;

For the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of violence.

Oh let not the oppressed return ashamed:

Let the poor and needy praise thy name."

"Have respect unto the covenant" (Psalms 74:20). It was not God who needed to be reminded of the covenant, it was the apostate Israel; but the psalmist was correct in calling God to remember it. That remembrance resulted in blessing the Babylonian captives, not the conceited and arrogant residue of apostasy in Judaea.

"The dark places of the earth" (Psalms 74:20). Most of the scholars seem to think this refers to the hiding places such as caves, etc., where people tried to hide from the Babylonian enemies, who, as this verse states, were systematically hunting them down wherever they could find them and killing them.

"The oppressed ... the poor" (Psalms 74:21). God never forgot those who loved him and called upon his name; but at a time when an entire kingdom was being cut off and destroyed completely, it was inevitable that many innocent and deserving people of God suffered.