Psalm 74:16

The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(16-18) An appeal from the God of history to the God of nature. Not only did He work wonders, but even the universe is the work of His hand.

(16) The light and the sun.—Evidently from Genesis 1:14; Genesis 1:16, where the same word occurs for the heavenly luminary generally, and then for the sun as chief.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 74:16. The day is thine, the night also is thine — It is not strange that thou hast done these great and wonderful works, for thou hast made the heavenly bodies, and appointed the vicissitudes of day and night, depending upon them, which is a far greater work. Thou hast prepared — Hebrew, הכינות, hachinota, thou hast established, that is, not only created, but settled in a constant and orderly course, the light and the sun — That primitive light mentioned Genesis 1:3, and the sun, in which it was afterward condensed and gathered: or the luminaries in general, with their chief the sun. Thus, “from the miraculous interpositions of God in behalf of his people, the psalmist passes to those ordinary and standing evidences of his goodness toward us, the sweet vicissitudes of light and darkness, and the grateful succession of times and seasons; by which man is taught, in the most sorrowful night, to look for a joyful morning; and, during the severest winter, to expect a reviving spring. Thus is the revolving year our constant instructer and monitor; incessantly inculcating the duties of faith and hope, as well as those of adoration, gratitude, and praise.” — Horne.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

74:12-17 The church silences her own complaints. What God had done for his people, as their King of old, encouraged them to depend on him. It was the Lord's doing, none besides could do it. This providence was food to faith and hope, to support and encourage in difficulties. The God of Israel is the God of nature. He that is faithful to his covenant about the day and the night, will never cast off those whom he has chosen. We have as much reason to expect affliction, as to expect night and winter. But we have no more reason to despair of the return of comfort, than to despair of day and summer. And in the world above we shall have no more changes.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The day is thine, the night also is thine - Thou hast universal dominion. All things are under thy control. Thou hast power, therefore, to grant what we desire of thee.

Thou hast prepared the light and the sun - He who has made the sun - that greatest and noblest object of creation to the view of man - must have almighty power, and must be able to give what we need.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

16, 17. The fixed orders of nature and bounds of earth are of God.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

It is not strange nor incredible that thou hast done these great and wonderful works, for thou hast made the heavenly bodies, and the vicissitudes of day and night, depending upon them, which is a far greater work.

Prepared; or rather, established, as this word oft signifies; not only created, but settled in a constant and orderly course.

The light; either,

1. That primitive light, Genesis 1:3, which afterwards was condensed and gathered into the sun. Or rather,

2. The moon, as divers, both ancient and modern, interpreters understand it, called here the light, to wit, the lesser luminary or light; wherein there is either a synecdoche of the general for the particular, or an ellipsis of the adjective, both which figures are very usual. And that the lesser light is here meant, may seem probable, both because it is opposed to the greater light, the sun here following; and because this is to rule the night, as the sun is to rule the day, Genesis 1:16; and so this clause answereth to and explains the former, wherein both day and night are mentioned.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The day is thine, and the night also is thine,.... He made the one and the other, and divided the one from the other; and can make them longer or shorter, clear or cloudy, as he pleases: and the day of prosperity and night of adversity are at his disposal; all the times of his people and of his church are in his hands; sometimes it is a night of darkness, deadness, sleepiness, and security, as it now is; ere long there will be no more night, but bright day; the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven fold as the light of seven days; and this is to be expected from him whose is the day and the night also, Revelation 21:25. Jarchi interprets the day, of the redemption of Israel; and the night, of distresses and afflictions:

thou hast prepared the light and the sun; first the light, and then the sun; for the light was before the sun; or the luminary, even the sun. Aben Ezra interprets the "light" of the moon, and so the Targum; and Kimchi, both of the moon and of the stars; Jarchi takes the light figuratively to be meant of the light of the law; but it is much better to understand it of the light of the Gospel, which God has prepared, and will send forth more largely in the latter day, whereby the whole earth shall be lightened; and when Christ the "sun" of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings, and who gives both the light of grace and glory to his people.

Geneva Study Bible

The {m} day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.

(m) Seeing that God by his providence governs and disposes all things, he gathers that he will take care chiefly for his children.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

16. The day &c.] Thine is the day and the night is thine.

the light and the sun] Possibly equivalent to ‘the moon and the sun’ (Psalm 104:19); but more probably ‘the luminaries and especially the sun.’ Cp. Genesis 1:14; Genesis 1:16.

16, 17. All the fixed laws and ordinances of the natural world were established and are maintained by God.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 16. - The day is thine, the night also is thine; thou hast prepared the light and the sun (see Genesis 1:5, 15, 16); rather, thou hast prepared him light and sun. "Luminary" (מָאור) is probably a class name for the heavenly lights generally. The sun is then particularized, as so much the most important of the luminaries. But the result is "an imperfect parallelism" (Cheyne). Psalm 74:16

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

With this prayer for the destruction of the enemies by God's interposition closes the first half of the Psalm, which has for its subject-matter the crying contradiction between the present state of things and God's relationship to Israel. The poet now draws comfort by looking back into the time when God as Israel's King unfolded the rich fulness of His salvation everywhere upon the earth, where Israel's existence was imperilled. בּקרב הארץ, not only within the circumference of the Holy Land, but, e.g., also within that of Egypt (Exodus 8:18-22). The poet has Egypt directly in his mind, for there now follows first of all a glance at the historical (Psalm 74:13-15), and then at the natural displays of God's power (Psalm 74:16, Psalm 74:17). Hengstenberg is of opinion that Psalm 74:13-15 also are to be understood in the latter sense, and appeals to Job 26:11-13. But just as Isaiah (Isaiah 51:9, cf. Psalm 27:1) transfers these emblems of the omnipotence of God in the natural world to His proofs of power in connection with the history of redemption which were exhibited in the case of a worldly power, so does the poet here also in Psalm 74:13-15. The תּנּיּן (the extended saurian) is in Isaiah, as in Ezekiel (התּנּים, Psalm 29:3; Psalm 32:2), an emblem of Pharaoh and of his kingdom; in like manner here the leviathan is the proper natural wonder of Egypt. As a water-snake or a crocodile, when it comes up with its head above the water, is killed by a powerful stroke, did God break the heads of the Egyptians, so that the sea cast up their dead bodies (Exodus 14:30). The ציּים, the dwellers in the steppe, to whom these became food, are not the Aethiopians (lxx, Jerome), or rather the Ichthyophagi (Bocahrt, Hengstenberg), who according to Agatharcides fed ἐκ τῶν ἐκριπτομένων εἰς τὴν χέρσον κητῶν, but were no cannibals, but the wild beasts of the desert, which are called עם, as in Proverbs 30:25. the ants and the rock-badgers. לציים is a permutative of the notion לעם, which was not completed: to a (singular) people, viz., to the wild animals of the steppe. Psalm 74:15 also still refers not to miracles of creation, but to miracles wrought in the course of the history of redemption; Psalm 74:15 refers to the giving of water out of the rock (Psalm 78:15), and Psalm 74:15 to the passage through the Jordan, which was miraculously dried up (הובשׁתּ, as in Joshua 2:10; Joshua 4:23; Joshua 5:1). The object מעין ונחל is intended as referring to the result: so that the water flowed out of the cleft after the manner of a fountain and a brook. נהרות are the several streams of the one Jordan; the attributive genitive איתן describe them as streams having an abundance that does not dry up, streams of perennial fulness. The God of Israel who has thus marvellously made Himself known in history is, however, the Creator and Lord of all created things. Day and night and the stars alike are His creatures. In close connection with the night, which is mentioned second, the moon, the מאור of the night, precedes the sun; cf. Psalm 8:4, where כּונן is the same as הכין in this passage. It is an error to render thus: bodies of light, and more particularly the sun; which would have made one expect מאורות before the specializing Waw. גּבוּלות are not merely the bounds of the land towards the sea, Jeremiah 5:22, but, according to Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26, even the boundaries of the land in themselves, that is to say, the natural boundaries of the inland country. קיץ וחרף are the two halves of the year: summer including spring (אביב), which begins in Nisan, the spring-month, about the time of the vernal equinox, and autumn including winter (צתו), after the termination of which the strictly spring vegetation begins (Sol 2:11). The seasons are personified, and are called God's formations or works, as it were the angels of summer and of winter.