Psalms 74:8

8. They said… Let us destroy them together We will destroy them at once: or utterly; that is, all the sacred places of Jehovah.

They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land The synagogue proper dates during and after the captivity, and the word is not to be taken here in the restricted sense which it afterward received, but in the general sense of sacred places of meeting, or assembly, perhaps like the proseuchae places of prayer mostly in the open field, or by the river side. Thus, Acts 16:16: “As we went to prayer,” προσευχην , to the place of prayer. Such oratories they might have had before the exile. Germs of them appear in the time of Samuel. 1Sa 9:12 ; 1 Samuel 10:5. Later, the “schools of the prophets” were gatherings for instruction and devotion, open, it would seem, to all who would come. Such gatherings also seem implied in 2 Kings 4:23, and other places. But “synagogues of God” certainly is not a happy rendering of מועדי אל , which simply means, meetingplaces of God. In Lamentations 2:6, it is rendered “places of the assembly.” The root of the verb means simply to gather, particularly at set times and for religious purposes; though in Psalms 75:2, it applies to a judicial assembly, or court. The object of the enemy was, as alluded to in the text, to destroy all places of religious worship or resort, and break up and annihilate all vestiges of the Hebrew system of religion.