Lift up thy steps unto the perpetual desolations everything in the sanctuary hath the enemy destroyed.
Psalm 74 opens with a people who feel abandoned. They stand among the burnt ruins of the place where God had chosen to live with them. Verse 3 is their boldest request: they do not ask God to explain the ruin, but to walk into it and look.
The psalmist lays the damage out in front of God as evidence, and asks Him to come and see it. Where the ESV says "Direct your steps," older translations read "lift up your feet."
They spread out before God the work of the enemy. They say, "Lift up your feet to the perpetual desolations." They ask God to look at the ruin the enemy has caused — a ruin that is beyond repair. The enemy has destroyed everything in the place of God's assembly. In the house of God, man has set up his own signs in place of God's signs. Instead of showing God, the house of God becomes a place to display man.
The word does not mean the sufferers are forecasting an endless future. It describes how the ruin feels while you live in it — one more day, and still no change.
The psalm begins with a cry to God from a people who feel He has abandoned them. They do not say "forever," as if they were predicting the future. They say "perpetually" — that is, day after day they live as people He has forsaken. They beg Him, as it were, to "lift His feet," that is, to come and look at these lasting ruins. Those ruins are the terrible and plain proof that He has left them, for they are the ruins of His own dwelling place among them. But who could have done this, as long as He still owned the place in any way? How impossible for an enemy to win against God!
Who owns the sanctuary decides who the attack is really against.
"Your enemies roar in the midst of your meeting place" (v. 4). Notice, they do not say "our enemies." They realize that this is much more serious. God's own enemies have found their way into what is God's property, and they set up their own business there as signs of their conquest… They have come not just to take the place over, but to destroy it. They break down and burn what was built as the dwelling of God, and they defile it.
The plea rests on what God has done for them, not on how they have behaved.
But they are "the sheep of His pasture," and He has forsaken them like this! This is not a claim that they were righteous. It is not that they had been teachable, obedient, submissive to authority — who could claim that for them? No, they are thinking of privilege: of His provision for them, and of all He had brought them into, however little they may have responded to His care. They were His assembly, His in a relationship He Himself had formed with them, for He had bought them; He had redeemed them. Whatever they might be, would He who never changes His mind deny His own work? He had chosen Zion and lived there: could He forsake it altogether?
Some commentators read this psalm as prophecy, pointing to a ruin still to come.
The apostasy of the future runs like a strong current, and it has harmful effects on people. Psalm 74 carries us on to hear of the punishment that will follow it. What Daniel foretold is now seen as having come to pass: "The place of His sanctuary was cast down." Once the image of the Beast, that abomination of desolation, has been set up in the holy place (Matt. 24:15-21), the invasion of the land must follow, and the sanctuary must be brought low.
The verse speaks of a building that enemies could burn down.
This is clearly a prayer of believers on Jewish ground, not on Christian ground. Christians have no such earthly sanctuary. The whole company of Christians are God's House in this present age (Eph. 2:22; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Tim. 3:15), and Christians in any one place are together God's Temple there (1 Cor. 3:16)… So it is a believer within Judaism who speaks here.
The sufferers do not blame bad luck. They trace the trouble to God's own hand:
They feel their troubles to be not only persecution from enemies, but the disciplining hand of God. That is the right way for a believer to feel his afflictions, because only God can give a proper answer.
- Ruin. The desolations are "perpetual" in the sense of day after day, not a prediction that they last forever.
- Ownership. The wrecked sanctuary is God's own dwelling, so the offence is against Him before it is against His people.
- Appeal. "Lift up your feet" asks God to walk over and look at damage that no human hand can repair.
- Ground. The plea rests on what God already did — He bought them and redeemed them — not on any good record of theirs.
- Answer. They take the trouble as God's disciplining hand, which is why they bring it back to the only One who can answer it.
Thine adversaries roar in the midst of thy place of assembly; they set up their signs [for] signs.
Psalm 74 is the prayer of people standing in the ruins of God's house. They ask why God has left the sheep of His pasture to the enemy. Verse 4 is the sound of that ruin: the shout of the invader fills the place where God's people once met.
The psalm looks back at a rebuilt sanctuary, now wrecked again. One writer sums up the whole picture:
Psalm 74 complains of the hostile destruction of the sanctuary, when it had been rebuilt in the land. God's enemies, as faith here calls them, roar in the congregations. Man's flags, not God's, are the signs of power. All public Jewish worship lay in ruins.
Faith calls them God's enemies, and that small choice of words carries the argument of the psalm. The complaint is not that the people lost their own things, but that enemies have taken what belongs to God:
"Your enemies roar in the midst of your meeting place" (v. 4). Notice, they do not say, "our enemies." They realise this is much more serious. God's own enemies have found their way into what belongs to God, and they set up their own business as signs of their conquest. This was similar to those who were buying and selling in the temple in the Lord's time, and whom He threw out.
The word "signs" is the puzzle of the verse, and commentators differ on it. One writer takes them as the invaders' own flags, set up as the new centre of power and confidence:
The enemies now roar in the middle of it. They set up their flags — human, and perhaps idolatrous, witnesses of pride — as the rallying points of power and confidence.
Another writer rules out military flags. He reads the signs as religious marks put in the place of Israel's own:
There is worse still. In the very place where people had seen only the marks of the worship of the true God, "they set up their signs as signs." Delitzsch says: "By 'signs' we must not understand military flags. The setting is the Temple, where other marks replaced Israel's own national marks. So the word must carry the religious sense it has when it is used of circumcision and of the Sabbath."
The enemy's sign is the only sign on show, and God says nothing. Yet faith does not let go:
On the outside, things look at their worst. The ravaging goes unchecked. The sanctuary lies desolate. There is roaring in the assemblies. Man's sign is the only sign in view anywhere. There is no voice even from God, no prophet, and no one who knows "how long." Yet faith owns God as "my King" from of old, and owns His mighty deliverances.
That silence is what makes the grief so heavy. People can bear a hard trial while someone can still say when it will end:
The wrath of God was "smoking over the sheep of His pasture," and the enemy had acted wickedly in the sanctuary. He roared in the middle of His congregations, set up his flags for signs, broke down the carved work at once with axes and hammers, and threw fire into the sanctuary, leaving a scene of ruin. Yet the most hopeless of all these things was this: "there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knows how long."
The temple went up one way and came down another. That contrast carries a lesson for anyone who works for God:
Matthew Henry in his commentary says, "It was to be the temple of the God of peace, so no iron tool must be heard in it. Quietness and silence both suit and help worship. God's work should be done with as much care and as little noise as possible. Men threw down the temple with axes and hammers, and those who did it roared in the middle of the congregation (Ps. 74:4, 6). But it was built up in silence. Noise and violence often hinder, but never advance the work of God."
- Roaring — the holy place now rings with the noise of destruction. The house went up in silence. It comes down with shouting, axes and hammers.
- Whose enemies — faith says "Your enemies," not "our enemies." The loss is God's before it is ours, so the quarrel is His to settle.
- Whose signs — the invader's marks stand where God's marks once stood. Writers differ: flags of pride, or religious substitutes. Either way, they claim the place as conquered.
- No sign — the deepest pain is not the ruin but the silence: no prophet, no one who can say how long.
- Still my King — nothing is left in sight to hold on to. So faith reaches back to God as King of old and to His past deliverances. "How long?" becomes a cry, not despair.
[A man] was known as he could lift up axes in the thicket of trees;
Psalm 74 is the prayer of people standing in the ruins of God's house. They spread the damage out before Him and ask Him to look at what the enemy has done. Verse 5 draws a bitter comparison: the men wrecking the sanctuary look like woodcutters in a forest. Axes were once honoured for very different work.
Older translations read this line as a man being known, or famous, for lifting up his axe in a thicket of trees. The writers below follow that older wording. The point turns on a reversal: axes and hammers had their place in the work of the temple, but never inside the house.
In Psalm 74 we have a lament of Asaph about the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar. He tells us that at one time a man was counted famous for going to Lebanon. There he cut down trees with an axe, and shaped them with a hammer to decorate the temple. He used destructive tools in the right way. Remember that when they built the temple, the workmen used neither tool inside the house itself. We learn from this Psalm that they used them outside the house, to get material for building it. There have been famous men in our own day who, by the gospel, cut men down from their high places in this world. In that way they helped to produce spiritual material for the house of God. But Asaph goes on to say that men were now using the axes and hammers inside the temple — not outside — and destroying the skilled work of others.
The same men, the same tools, the same strength — aimed at the opposite end.
Men once famous for felling trees now spending their strength destroying the sanctuary of God. Heart-breaking to those who loved the house for the sake of the One who dwelt there.
The next verse names the target: the carved work. Here is what that work was.
This was much used in the Temple. "Around all the walls of the house he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers." They were then overlaid with gold. 1 Kings 6:18, 29-35. In prophecy the Psalmist mourns as the enemy breaks it down with axes and hammers. Ps. 74:6.
The comparison to a forest is where the horror lies. Men handled skilled beauty as if it were rough timber.
Everything that speaks of the beauty of God's house — the carved work — they break down without pity. They care no more about it than a man cutting down trees in a wood.
The psalm's complaint turns on who owns the house.
Notice, they do not say, "our enemies." They realize that this is much more serious. God's own enemies have found their way into what is God's property, and they set up their own business there as signs of their conquest… Rather than using axes to cut down trees outside, they were using them to break down the carved work of the sanctuary (v. 5). For they have come, not simply to take possession, but to destroy.
Commentators differ over which ruin the psalm describes. Some tie it to Nebuchadnezzar's attack; one writer sees that as only part of the answer, and marvels at the prophecy itself.
In part this Psalm was fulfilled in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Its complete fulfilment waits for "the great tribulation."… Asaph lived in David's day. It is not certain that he lived to see the Temple built, yet he writes so vividly of its destruction! The spirit of prophecy is divinely wonderful.
A man once won honour by swinging an axe for the building. The verse asks where our own strength goes.
It is much easier to drive people out than to get them in. One has had the sad experience of seeing men stir up discord in the gatherings. As a result, people have been driven away. How much more blessed it would have been to work for the conversion of others, and to help them become material that beautifies the house of God… Destruction or construction, which is true of us?
Axes are not the only tools that tear down. One writer describes a kind of teaching in the same terms:
Modernism is destructive, not constructive. It deals in subtraction and knows nothing of real helpfulness. It robs and leaves one the poorer. It takes away the fine gold and leaves the dross. In short, it is unbelief dressed up as religion — unbelief with a hypocritical veneer.
- Outside — axes and hammers were honourable tools. In the forest they cut and shaped wood for God's house, and they never touched the house itself.
- Inside — verse 5 turns the same tools the wrong way. Men swing them in the sanctuary as if they were clearing a thicket.
- Beauty — the carved work fell under them: cherubim, palm trees and open flowers overlaid with gold. The glory of the house was gone.
- Ownership — the psalm never says "our enemies." The wreckers had broken into God's own property, and the insult fell on Him.
- Us — one question is left for each of us: are we felling timber for the house, or swinging the axe inside it?
And now they break down its carved work altogether, with hatchets and hammers.
Psalm 74 is the cry of people standing in the wreckage of God's house, where enemies now swing axes and hammers. Verse 6 fixes on one detail: the carved panelling smashed to pieces.
The carved work was a real feature of the building, and Scripture uses a different word for the carved images of idols.
This was used a great deal in the Temple: "Around all the walls of the house he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers." They were then overlaid with gold (1 Kings 6:18, 29-35). The Psalmist, speaking as a prophet, laments that the enemy breaks it down with axes and hammers (Ps. 74:6). For the 'carved images' of idolatry (Judges 18:18; 2 Chron. 33:7, 22; 34:3-4) another word is used, which is elsewhere translated 'graven image.'
The enemy went for that beauty first, and did not plan to stop with one building.
They break down everything that speaks of the beauty of God's house — the carved work — without pity, as casually as a man cutting down trees in a wood. God's house is defiled, and the enemy aims to destroy every meeting place of God's people throughout the land.
The same tools that once shaped the temple now wreck it.
He tells us that a man was once counted famous for going to Lebanon, cutting down trees with an axe, and shaping them with a hammer to decorate the temple. He used destructive tools in the right way. Remember that when the temple was built, neither of these tools was used in the house itself. This Psalm shows us that they were used outside the house, to get material for building it. In our own day there have been famous men who used the gospel to cut people down from their high places in this world, and so helped to produce spiritual material for the house of God. But Asaph goes on to say that the axes and hammers were now being used inside the temple, not outside, and the skilled work of others was being destroyed.
Look at how the temple went up in the first place.
No trace of human tools appeared while the temple was being built. It went up in silence. No one heard an axe or a hammer. It was the work of God, and everything was prepared beforehand.
The people who pray this psalm see past their own loss.
Notice, they do not say "our enemies." They realise this is much more serious: God's own enemies have found their way into what is God's property, setting up their own affairs there as signs of their conquest… Instead of using axes to cut down trees outside, they were using them to break down the carved work of the sanctuary (v. 5). They have come not simply to take possession, but to destroy.
Something other than plunder is driving their hands.
Nothing but malice seems to guide the hands and strengthen the arms of these invaders of the holy places. They look like men levelling trees in a thicket. But no — it is the carved work of the sanctuary that they smash without mercy, with axes and hammers.
Which ruin is the psalm describing? One writer sees two: a past one, and a worse one still to come.
In part this Psalm was fulfilled in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. But its full fulfilment waits for the time of "the great tribulation"… Men once famous for felling trees now spend their strength destroying the sanctuary of God. It broke the hearts of those who loved the house for the sake of the One who lived in it. Asaph lived in the days of David. It is not certain that he lived to see the Temple built, yet he describes its destruction so vividly!
One thing is missing from all this grief.
Every part of Israel's sorrow is here, except that they never say they feel their sin, or confess it — though verse 1 may hint at it… Every outward mark of an ordered relationship is gone.
The same writer turns the picture on us.
It is much easier to drive people out than to bring them in. I have had the sad experience of seeing men busy sowing discord in the gatherings, and as a result people were driven away. How much more blessed it would have been to work at bringing people to conversion, and to help them become material that beautifies the house of God… Destruction or construction — which is true of us?
The same axe has been seen at work in teaching that empties the faith rather than builds it.
Modernism is destructive, not constructive. It deals in subtraction and knows nothing of real helpfulness. It robs and leaves one the poorer. It takes away the fine gold and leaves the dross.
- Built silent. The temple went up without the sound of axe or hammer inside it — a work of God, with every piece prepared beforehand.
- Broken loud. The tools kept out of the building now swing inside it, smashing skilled work that others made.
- Beauty first. What falls is the carved cherubim, palm trees and flowers overlaid with gold. That was the beauty of God's house, and they chop it like timber.
- God's loss. They do not say "our enemies" — these are God's enemies, in God's property, and the malice is aimed past the building at Him.
- Our axe. Ask which way you are swinging. Driving people out is easy. Bringing people in to beautify God's house is the better work.
They have set on fire thy sanctuary, they have profaned the habitation of thy name to the ground.
Psalm 74 is the cry of God's people standing in the smoking ruins of His house. Axes, fire and enemy banners have taken the place of worship. This verse raises the question the whole psalm turns on. If the place was God's own home, what does its burning say about Him? And what can faith still hold when the building is gone?
The psalm never calls the ruined building "ours." Every pronoun in the verse hands the loss to God. One writer says why that makes it heavier:
"Your enemies roar in the midst of your meeting place" (v. 4). Notice, they do not say "our enemies." Realize that this is much more serious. God's own enemies have found their way into what is God's property, and they have set up their own business there as the signs of their conquest.
The burning was not the accident of a battle. The same writer points to the enemy's own words in verse 8 as proof of intent:
They have come not just to take the place over, but to destroy it. They break it down, set it on fire and defile it — and it was built as the dwelling of God. This was not only done on the spur of the moment. They had already said in their hearts, "Let us destroy them altogether" (v. 8). It was a planned project in bitter enmity against God.
Another writer notes how small the attackers look next to the One they struck at:
Mere malice seems to guide the hands and strengthen the arms of the invaders of the holy places. They set the sanctuary on fire and burn it to the ground, with no respect for what is holy. And this flame spreads far and wide through the land, against every place of gathering that bears the Name of the "Mighty One." Men, who are only His creatures, attack that Name with their pitiful weak arms.
To "defile" the dwelling place of God's name is more than damage to stone and cedar. The enemy took out what God had put there and put his own mark in its place:
In the house of God man has set up his signs in place of God's signs. Instead of showing God, the house of God becomes a place for putting man on display.
Commentators differ over which destruction the psalm describes. Some take it as the Babylonian destruction of Solomon's temple. They see a turning point there for the whole nation:
The temple built by Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians. This was the beginning of the "times of the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24). The glory had departed from the temple. The sentence passed was, "Lo-ammi, not My people."
Others read the psalm as still to come. They tie the ruin to a great turning away from God that has not happened yet:
This Psalm describes the strong current of the turning away from God that is still in the future. Here in Psalm 74 we learn of the complete ruin of the sanctuary that follows that turning away. Then we hear true saints pleading with God.
The fire was terrible. The silence afterwards was worse:
After the enemy had wrecked the sanctuary and left it in ruins, the most hopeless thing of all was this: no prophet was left, and no one could tell how long it would last. Even in the worst disaster there is some comfort while you can still see the end of it, and while someone is there who can say how long it will last.
The ruined house carried God's name. That name is the one thing left to plead:
The people of God turn away from the cruelty and blasphemy of lawless wickedness and appeal to Him who long ago had taken Israel's name as His own. He had lived at Zion. He had bought the people and redeemed the land to be His own... So His Name is the only ground of this appeal.
This prayer belongs to people with a sanctuary made of stone. Christians are not in that position:
Christians have no such earthly sanctuary. In this present age, all Christians together are God's House (Eph. 2:22; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Tim. 3:15). And in any one place, the Christians there are together God's Temple (1 Cor. 3:16).
- His, not ours — the enemies, the meeting place, the sanctuary and the name all belong to God. That is what makes the loss so serious.
- His house — defiling it meant swapping God's signs for man's. A place built to show God became a place to show off man.
- His enemies — the burning was planned malice against God, yet carried out by weak human arms.
- His silence — no signs and no prophet meant no one could say how long, and that was the heaviest part of the trial.
- His name — nothing of their own is left to plead. Faith appeals to the God who put His own name on that people and place.
They said in their heart, Let us destroy them together they have burned up all God's places of assembly in the land.
Psalm 74 is the prayer of God's people standing in the ruins of His sanctuary. Verse 8 records the coldest detail: the ruin was planned. What were these "meeting places," and how could God let every one of them burn?
The verse opens with what the invaders said to themselves. One commentator notes when they said it: the decision came first, and the burning followed.
They have come not simply to take what is there, but to destroy. They break down what was built as God's dwelling, they set it on fire, and they defile it. This was not done on the spur of the moment. They had already said in their hearts, "We will utterly subdue them" (v. 8). It was a planned project in bitter hostility toward God, and the fire had destroyed "all the meeting places of God in the land."
Older translations read that line "Let us destroy them altogether."
Older translations read "synagogues" here. That can make a reader picture the buildings of later Jewish history. The Hebrew word simply means a gathering.
In the Old Testament of the King James Version this word appears only once, in Psalm 74:8. But the same Hebrew word (moed) is translated 'congregation' many times. Darby, and the margin of the Revised Version, translate it in Psalm 74:8 as "places of assembly." … The main thought is 'congregation' or 'gathering.' As far as anyone knows, there were no buildings called synagogues in Old Testament times.
The burning did not stop at one building. What it hunted was every gathering that carried God's Name.
Then they set it on fire and burn it to the ground, treating what is holy as common. And this flame spreads far and wide through the land against every place of gathering that owns the Name of the "Mighty One." So the weak, pitiful arms of men attack that Name — and those men are His own creatures.
The invaders did more than damage a building. One writer describes both what they walked into and what they were after.
Only those serving God were meant to walk in the sacred courts, but pagan invaders have defiled them with their feet. They have also tried to wipe out every trace of true worship in the land (v. 8).
Stuart also sets a limit on how far we can take this verse today. The person praying had an earthly sanctuary to lose:
This is clearly a prayer of saints on Jewish ground, not on Christian ground. Christians have no such earthly sanctuary. In this present age the whole company of Christians is God's House (Eph. 2:22; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Tim. 3:15), and in any one place the Christians there are together God's Temple (1 Cor. 3:16).
One writer reads the burning as the work of a man who will allow no prayer to anyone but himself.
They burn all the meeting places of God (verse 8). For in that day there will be a man who wants to take the place of God. He will not allow anyone's requests to be made to anyone but himself. Darius is a picture of this (Dan. 6). But the king he pictures will do as he pleases, and not follow the advice of others. He will exalt himself above every god, and speak astonishing things against the God of gods (Dan. 11:36; 2 Thess. 2:4).
One writer treats the ruin under Nebuchadnezzar as a first instalment, and says why the invader is allowed to succeed.
This Psalm was fulfilled in part in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Its full fulfilment still waits for the time of "the great tribulation." The King of the North will come down with overwhelming armies. Because of the evil of the mass of the Jewish people, he will be allowed to take out his vengeance on the land and the sanctuary (Dan. 11:40; Joel 2).
With the meeting places gone, what is left for the people who used them? One writer follows the psalm a step further, to the point where no help is in sight.
And who knows the limit? There is no prophet any more: there is none who knows how long. But here evil at its worst stirs up the appeal to God again — and He does know.
- Plan — The wreckage began as a decision in the heart: bitter enmity against God, not the heat of the moment.
- Places — The word behind "synagogues" means a gathering or congregation. No such buildings existed in Old Testament times.
- Purpose — The fire spread through the whole land. It hunted every gathering that owned the Name of the Mighty One, to wipe out every trace of true worship.
- Person — One writer sees behind it a ruler who allows requests to no one but himself. Darius is a picture of him, and the worst is still ahead.
- Prayer — Nothing was left to lean on — no prophet, no timetable. That is what drove the appeal back to the God who does know how long.