Psalm 74:4

Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(4) Thine enemies . . .—As the text stands, render, Thine enemies have roared in the midst of thine assembly, but many MSS. have the plural as in Psalm 74:8, where see Note for the meaning of the word.

For “roared,” see Psalm 22:1, Note, and comp. Lamentations 2:7, where a similar scene is described. Instead of the voices of priest and choir, there have been heard the brutal cries of the heathen as they shouted at their work of destruction like lions roaring over their prey; or if, as some think, the reference in the next clause is to military ensigns, we have a picture of a wild soldiery exulting round the emblem of their triumph.

They set up their ensigns for signs.—The Hebrew for ensigns and signs is the same. Possibly the poet meant to have written some word meaning idols, but avoids it from dislike of mentioning the abominable things, and instead of places their idols as signs, writes, places their signs as signs.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 74:4. Thine enemies roar — Make loud outcries; either out of rage and fury against the conquered and captivated Israelites, now in their power; or rather, in the way of triumph for their success and victory. In the midst of thy congregations — In the places where thy people used to assemble together for thy worship; whereby they designed to insult, not only over us, but over thee also, as if their idols had been too strong for thee. They set up their ensigns for signs — As trophies, in token of their victory over us and over thee. “No sound,” says Dr. Horne, “can be more shocking than the confused clamours of a heathen army sacking the temple; no sight so afflicting as that of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. Turbulent passions are the enemies which raise an uproar of confusion in the heart; wealth, power, and pleasure are the idols which profane that sanctuary.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

74:1-11 This psalm appears to describe the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Chaldeans. The deplorable case of the people of God, at the time, is spread before the Lord, and left with him. They plead the great things God had done for them. If the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt was encouragement to hope that he would not cast them off, much more reason have we to believe, that God will not cast off any whom Christ has redeemed with his own blood. Infidels and persecutors may silence faithful ministers, and shut up places of worship, and say they will destroy the people of God and their religion together. For a long time they may prosper in these attempts, and God's oppressed servants may see no prospect of deliverance; but there is a remnant of believers, the seed of a future harvest, and the despised church has survived those who once triumphed over her. When the power of enemies is most threatening, it is comfortable to flee to the power of God by earnest prayer.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thine enemies roar - This refers to the shout and tumult of war. They raised up the war-cry even in the very place where the congregations had been assembled; where God had been worshipped. The word rendered "roar" properly has reference to wild beasts; and the meaning is, that their war-cry resembled the howling of beasts of prey.

In the midst of thy congregations - literally, "in the midst of thine assembly." This is a different word from that which is rendered "congregation" in Psalm 74:2. This word - מועד mô‛êd - means a meeting together by mutual appointment, and is often applied to the meeting of God with his people at the tabernacle, which was therefore called "the tent of the congregation," or, more properly, "the tent of meeting," as the place where God met with his people, Exodus 29:10, Exodus 29:44; Exodus 33:7; Leviticus 3:8, Leviticus 3:13; Leviticus 10:7, Leviticus 10:9; "et saepe." The meaning here is, that they roared like wild beasts in the very place which God had appointed as the place where he would meet with his people.

They set up their ensigns for signs - That is, they set up "their" banners or standards, as "the" standards of the place; as that which indicated sovereignty over the place. They proclaimed thus that it was a conquered place, and they set up their own standards as denoting their title to it, or as declaring that they ruled there. It was no longer a place sacred to God; it was publicly seen to belong to a foreign power.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. roar—with bestial fury.

congregations—literally, "worshipping assemblies."

ensigns—literally, "signs"—substituted their idolatrous objects, or tokens of authority, for those articles of the temple which denoted God's presence.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Roar, i.e. make loud outcries; either from their rage and fury against the conquered and captivated Israelites now in their power; or rather, in way of triumph for their success and victory.

In the midst of thy congregations; in the places where thy people used to assemble together for thy worship; whereby they designed to insult not only over us, but over thee also, as if their gods had been too strong for thee.

Signs; or, trophies, or monuments of their victories obtained over God, and over his people, as conquerors used to do in like cases.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations,.... Particular churches, gathered out of the world in Gospel order, and which meet together at particular times and places; in the midst of these, and against them their enemies, and who are the Lord's enemies, roar like lions, as Satan, and bloody persecutors, and particularly antichrist, whose mouth is the mouth of a lion, which is opened in blasphemy against God and his people, Revelation 13:2,

they set up their ensigns for signs; or "signs", "signs", false ones for true ones; meaning either military signs, as the Roman eagle, set as signs and trophies of victory; or idolatrous statues and images, such an one as Antiochus brought into the temple; or false miracles and antichristian marks, in the room of true miracles, and the true mark of Christ's followers; see 2 Thessalonians 2:9. The Jewish writers generally interpret it of the divinations and superstitions rites used by the king of Babylon, when he was coming up against Jerusalem, Ezekiel 21:21.

Geneva Study Bible

Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they {c} set up their ensigns for signs.

(c) They have destroyed your true religion, and spread their banners in sign of defiance.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4. Render, Thine adversaries roared in the midst of thy meeting place. Mô’çd may mean either the place or the time at which God meets His people, as of old He met them at “the tent of meeting” (Exodus 29:42-44). Here probably the Temple is meant. Its courts were filled with heathen foes instead of reverent worshippers: they rang with wild shouts of triumph instead of the praises of Israel. Cp. Lamentations 2:6-7.

they set up their ensigns for signs] Lit., their signs as signs. Probably their military ensigns or standards (Numbers 2:2) are meant. The erection of these in the Temple itself was a visible sign of its desecration, and of the completeness of the triumph of the heathen. Many commentators however suppose that religious emblems and ceremonies are meant, and those who regard this Psalm as Maccabaean suppose that the idolatrous altars erected and rites celebrated by command of Antiochus are referred to. See 1Ma 1:45-49; 1Ma 1:54; 1Ma 1:59; 1Ma 3:48.

4–9. A graphic picture of the desecration of the Temple by the heathen enemies of Israel.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 4. - Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; or, have roared; i.e. have created disturbances, or raised tumults. The temple did not pass into the enemy's hands without fighting and bloodshed; the battlecry of the assailants and their shouts of triumph when victorious resounded through it (comp. Lamentations 2:7) They set up their ensigns for signs. Probably for tokens of victory and dominion. Scarcely as objects of worship, since their intention was to destroy the temple and leave Jerusalem desolate. Psalm 74:4

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The poet now more minutely describes how the enemy has gone on. Since קדשׁ in Psalm 74:3 is the Temple, מועדיך in Psalm 74:4 ought likewise to mean the Temple with reference to the several courts; but the plural would here (cf. Psalm 74:8) be misleading, and is, too, only a various reading. Baer has rightly decided in favour of מועדך;

(Note: The reading מעודיך is received, e.g., by Elias Hutter and Nissel; the Targum translates it, Kimchi follows it in his interpretation, and Abraham of Zante follows it in his paraphrase; it is tolerably widely known, but, according to the lxx and Syriac versions and MSS, it is to be rejected.)

מועד, as in Lamentations 2:6., is the instituted (Numbers 17:1-13 :19 [4]) place of God's intercourse with His congregation (cf. Arab. mı̂‛âd, a rendezvous). What Jeremiah says in Lamentations 2:7 (cf. שׁאג, Jeremiah 2:15) is here more briefly expressed. By אותתם (Psalm 74:4) we must not understand military insignia; the scene of the Temple and the supplanting of the Israelitish national insignia to be found there, by the substitution of other insignia, requires that the word should have the religious reference in which it is used of circumcision and of the Sabbath (Exodus 31:13); such heathen אתות, which were thrust upon the Temple and the congregation of Jahve as henceforth the lawful ones, were those which are set forth in 1 Macc. 1:45-49, and more particularly the so-called abomination of desolation mentioned in v. 54 of the same chapter. With יוּדע (Psalm 74:5) the terrible scene which was at that time taking place before their eyes (Psalm 79:10) is introduced. כּמביא is the subject; it became visible, tangible, noticeable, i.e., it looked, and one experienced it, as if a man caused the axe to enter into the thicket of the wood, i.e., struck into or at it right and left. The plural קדּמּות forces itself into the simile because it is the many heathen warriors who are, as in Jeremiah 46:22., likened to these hewers of wood. Norzi calls the Kametz of בסבך־עץ Kametz chatuph; the combining form would then be a contraction of סבך (Ewald, Olshausen), for the long ā of סבך does not admit of any contraction. According to another view it is to be read bi-sbāch-etz, as in Esther 4:8 kethāb-hadāth with counter-tone Metheg beside the long vowel, as e.g., עץ־הגּן, Genesis 2:16). The poet follows the work of destruction up to the destroying stroke, which is introduced by the ועת (perhaps ועת, Ker ועתּה), which arrests one's attention. In Psalm 74:5 the usual, unbroken quiet is depicted, as is the heavy Cyclopean labour in the Virgilian illi inter sese, etc.; in jahalomûn, Psalm 74:6 (now and then pointed jahlomûn), we hear the stroke of the uplifted axes, which break in pieces the costly carved work of the Temple. The suffix of פּתּוּחיה (the carved works thereof) refers, according to the sense, to מועדך. The lxx, favouring the Maccabaean interpretation, renders: ἐξέκοψαν τάς θύρας αὐτῆς (פּתחיה). This shattering of the panelling is followed in Psalm 74:7 by the burning, first of all, as we may suppose, of this panelling itself so far as it consists of wood. The guaranteed reading here is מקדשׁך, not מקדשׁיך. שׁלּח בּאשׁ signifies to set on fire, immittere igni, differing from שׁלּח אשׁ בּ, to set fire to, immittere ignem. On לארץ חלּלוּ, cf. Lamentations 2:2; Jeremiah 19:13. Hitzig, following the lxx, Targum, and Jerome, derives the exclamation of the enemies נינם from נין: their whole generation (viz., we will root out)! But נין is posterity, descendants; why therefore only the young and not the aged? And why is it an expression of the object and not rather of the action, the object of which would be self-evident? נינם is fut. Kal of ינה, here equals Hiph. הונה, to force, oppress, tyrannize over, and like אנס, to compel by violence, in later Hebrew. נינם (from יינה, like ייפה) is changed in pause into נינם; cf. the future forms in Numbers 21:30; Exodus 34:19, and also in Psalm 118:10-12. Now, after mention has been made of the burning of the Temple framework, מועדי־אל cannot denote the place of the divine manifestation after its divisions (Hengstenberg), still less the festive assemblies (Bttcher), which the enemy could only have burnt up by setting fire to the Temple over their heads, and כל does not at all suit this. The expression apparently has reference to synagogues (and this ought not to be disputed), as Aquila and Symmachus render the word. For there is no room for thinking of the separate services conducted by the prophets in the northern kingdom (2 Kings 4:23), because this kingdom no longer existed at the time this Psalm was written; nor of the בּמות, the burning down of which no pious Israelite would have bewailed; nor of the sacred places memorable from the early history of Israel, which are nowhere called מועדים, and after the founding of the central sanctuary appear only as the seats of false religious rites. The expression points (like בּית ועד, Sota ix. 15) to places of assembly for religious purposes, to houses for prayer and teaching, that is to say, to synagogues - a weighty instance in favour of the Maccabaean origin of the Psalm.