Psalm 74:14

The psalm is a maskil, a psalm of instruction or contemplation, and it is attributed to Asaph. Its opening verses (Psalm 74:1–11) grieve over a sanctuary defiled by its enemies. They have set it on fire, broken down its carved work, and left the people with no sign and no prophet (Psalm 74:3–8). The setting most often given is the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC, though some place it in the Maccabean period. The temple was the place where the LORD had set his name among his people and the sign of his covenant presence, so its burning, followed by exile, shook their understanding of his power and his promises.

People ask why the psalmist reminds God of things God already knows. He is appealing to God’s own character and his past deeds as the ground for asking him to act now. If God ordered the whole creation and has saved his people before, he is able to rescue them again, and he has bound himself to them by covenant. The remembering also steadies the psalmist and the community that prays with him. Other psalms plead in the same way from the LORD’s rule over the raging sea (Psalm 89:9–11).

The order of creation stands beside the ruin. The sanctuary lay in ashes, yet day still followed night and the seasons still turned. This also sharpens the question the psalm asks: why should the God who keeps such order in the heavens allow such disorder among his people? The section prepares for the closing plea that God would remember his covenant and rise to plead his own cause (Psalm 74:18–23).

“For God is my King of old” is the confession on which the rest of the section stands. The word for God, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form and, when it names the true God, is read as a plural of majesty, with its verbs usually singular. With “my” beside it, it names the one true God of Israel. “King” is melek, from mālak, “to reign”, the word for a ruler with authority and dominion. By calling him “my King” the psalmist makes the confession his own, speaking for the whole community, and it carries trust and allegiance to the one he serves.

“Of old” is qedem, which used of God means “ancient”, from a root meaning to be in front or to precede. The Hebrew phrase is melek miqqedem. God’s reign reaches back through all of Israel’s history, and the psalms confess that his throne is established and unshaken (Psalm 93:1–2). The burning of an earthly sanctuary leaves that reign untouched. The days of old the psalmist has in mind include the night God brought Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12) and the crossing of the Jordan into Canaan (Joshua 3), and the next verses go on to name them.

“Working salvation” shows a King who acts. The verb pâʻal means to do, make or work, and Strong’s adds “especially to practise”. It stands here as a participle, which pictures God’s work as continuing. Salvation, yᵉshûwʻâh, from yāsha (“to save”), is a broad word for deliverance, rescue, victory, help and well-being. Scripture can use it of a rescue God brings about through people, as when Jonathan “hath wrought this great salvation in Israel”, and it traces every such salvation to the LORD. David calls him his rock and his deliverer (Psalm 18:2), and the God who rescued his people before is the God Asaph is calling on now.

“In the midst of the earth” tells where he works it. His saving acts are done openly, before the world, and his rule extends over all the earth. So the lament of one nation is set within a wider view, the one Isaiah gives when God says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).

“Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength” recalls the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), when the waters were divided before Israel and returned over Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14:21–28). The verb pârar means to break up, and it is often used figuratively of breaking or making void. Here God breaks the sea apart and makes a path where there was none. He does it “by thy strength”, ʻôz, from ʻâzaz, a word for strength or might that can also mean a stronghold, and Strong’s lists among its uses force, security, majesty and praise. The sea opened by God’s own might, as his act on behalf of his people.

“Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters” goes on to the enemy. The word for dragons, tannîyn, names a creature such as a sea monster, serpent or dragon. In the context of the Exodus these dragons in the waters are Pharaoh and his army, overthrown in the sea. Ezekiel calls Pharaoh “the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers”. The prophets also use the names Rahab and Leviathan for Egypt and for powers that oppose God. Isaiah calls on the arm of the LORD that cut Rahab and made a way through the sea (Isaiah 51:9–10), and the sea and Rahab together appear again in Psalm 89:9–10. Breaking the heads of an enemy is a picture of complete defeat, the end of its power and its leadership.

“Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces” uses the verb râtsats, to crack in pieces, break, bruise or crush. With “heads”, rôʼsh, in the plural, the picture is of an enemy shattered so thoroughly that it can threaten no one again. The verse speaks of a finished act in the past, the victory God has already won.

“And gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness” turns the defeated enemy into food. The power that threatened God’s people becomes something that sustains them. The people inhabiting the wilderness are best taken as Israel after the sea, the people God led through the desert and fed with manna and quail (Exodus 16), and to whom he gave water as well. So the verse holds together God’s victory over his enemies and his care for his own. He brings his people through the sea, and then he feeds them on the far side of it. No wilderness is too barren for his provision.

“Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood” uses bâqaʻ, to split, cleave or break open. The same verb is used when the ground split open beneath Korah’s company (Numbers 16:31) and when God told Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea and divide it (Exodus 14:16). The fountain, maʿyan, is a spring, and the flood, naḥal, is a torrent or the stream that runs in a valley. The likeliest reference is the water God brought from the rock for his thirsty people in the wilderness, at Rephidim (Exodus 17:6) and at Meribah (Numbers 20:11). The words may also recall God’s ordering of the waters at creation (Genesis 1:6–10). Either way, God gives water where there was none.

“Thou driedst up mighty rivers” is the opposite act. The verb yâbêsh means to dry up, as water does, or to wither, as grass does, and it can also mean to become weak or to be ashamed. “Mighty” is ʼêythân, from a root meaning to continue, so these are rivers that keep flowing, great perennial waterways that do not run dry in a hot season. God dried them up for his people to cross, at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21–22) and at the Jordan, where the waters stood still while Israel passed over into the land (Joshua 3:15–17). Isaiah speaks of the LORD who makes a way in the sea (Isaiah 43:16–17).

The verse shows God’s rule over water from both sides. He opens the rock so that his people can drink, and he dries the river so that his people can pass. The Creator who set the waters in their place moves them as he wills, for the deliverance and the life of his people.

“The day is thine, the night also is thine” names the two halves of every day and gives both to God. Yôwm means day, or a span of time, and Strong’s traces its root to heat (“as the warm hours”). Layil is night, and Strong’s takes it to mean properly a twist away from the light, figuratively adversity. In a lament this matters greatly. The night of his people’s suffering belongs to God as surely as the day, and nothing in their darkness lies outside his rule.

“Thou hast prepared the light and the sun” says how the day and night came to be. The verb kûwn means to set up, establish, fix or prepare, and so God set the light and the sun in place, each with its work. The light is probably the light of the first day, when God divided the light from the darkness and called them Day and Night (Genesis 1:3–5), and the sun is the greater light he made on the fourth day to rule the day (Genesis 1:16). The verse echoes the whole account of creation in Genesis 1, which begins with God creating the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1). Isaiah gives the same truth in God’s own voice: he forms the light and creates darkness (Isaiah 45:7).

The regular turn of day and night is also a pledge. Through Jeremiah, God ties his covenant with David to his covenant with the day and the night (Jeremiah 33:20–21), so the God who keeps the day and the night in their order will keep his promises to his people.

“Thou hast set all the borders of the earth” uses nâtsab, to station or set up, the act of placing something where it is to stand. The borders, gᵉbûwlâh, are boundaries, regions, landmarks, the limits God has fixed in his creation. Jeremiah speaks of the bound God has placed for the sea (Jeremiah 5:22), and in Job the LORD asks who laid the foundations of the earth and set its measures (Job 38:4–38). Isaiah calls him the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth (Isaiah 40:28).

“Thou hast made summer and winter” uses yâtsar, to mould or form, as a potter shapes clay, and figuratively to determine or resolve. Summer, qayits, is the warm dry season and also its harvest, the gathered grain and fruit. Winter, chôreph, covers the autumn and the cold, rainy season. Together they name the whole turning year. In a land that lived by its crops, the reliable return of the seasons was a sign of God’s provision, and God promised Noah that the seasons would continue as long as the earth remains (Genesis 8:22). The verse sets order in space beside order in time: God has fixed where things are and when they come.

The New Testament shows that the Son shares in all the works this passage praises. The Word was with God and was God in the beginning (John 1:1), and all things were made through him (John 1:3). Paul says that all things were created by him and for him, and that by him all things consist (Colossians 1:15–17). The light and the sun, the borders of the earth and the seasons are the work of the Son as well as the Father. Hebrews says to the Son that his throne is for ever (Hebrews 1:8), and in Revelation a great multitude rejoices that the Lord God omnipotent reigns (Revelation 19:6). He is the King of old.

He also worked salvation in the midst of the earth. His healings and his deliverance of the oppressed, and above all his death and resurrection, were done openly for the world to see, and repentance and forgiveness of sins were to be preached in his name among all nations (Luke 24:46–47).

Jesus showed the same rule over the waters. He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39), and he walked on the sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:25). The breaking of the dragon’s heads looks forward to the promise that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). At the cross Christ “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). He came “that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), and through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death and set free those held in bondage by the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). Revelation names the great dragon as the devil and Satan (Revelation 12:9) and tells of his final end in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10).

God fed his people in the wilderness and split the rock for them to drink. Jesus calls himself the bread of life (John 6:35) and offers living water to all who ask (John 4:10–14). The God who prepared the light sent his Son as the light of the world (John 8:12), and in the city to come there is no night, because the Lord God gives his people light (Revelation 22:5). Through Christ God is already making a new creation, and anyone who is in Christ belongs to it (2 Corinthians 5:17).

These six verses were spoken among the ashes of the sanctuary, and they show where faith goes when everything visible has been lost. It goes to who God is and what he has already done. He is King, and he was King long before this trouble came. He has broken stronger enemies than the one at the gate, given water from rock and food in the desert, and dried up rivers that never ran dry.

The passage also gives us the sky and the year as witnesses. Every sunrise and every nightfall, every summer and winter, is the work of the same God who divided the sea, and they come round on time whatever is happening among his people. When the psalmist says “the night also is thine”, he gives us a way to speak of our own hardest seasons, for the night belongs to the God who made it. Out of this remembering comes honest, confident prayer, and the psalm itself goes on from here to ask God to arise.