Psalms 74

Maschil of Asaph.

The historic ground of this psalm is found in 2 Chronicles 36:17-20; Jeremiah 52:4-16. It seems properly to stand first in the order of those psalms which commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Chaldeans, and is intimately connected with Psalms 79:0. The author, who was of the family of Asaph, must be supposed to be with the multitude of the exiles on their way to Babylonia, or recently to have come to that province. Psalms 74:1-3 are an earnest prayer for divine interposition in behalf of his Church; Psalms 74:4-8 are a more detailed description of what the enemy had done; Psalms 74:9-11 are a bitter cry of distress that in all their troubles God has not seemed to reveal himself by any offer of help or promise of relief; Psalms 74:12-15 are a rehearsal of God in their national history for the encouragement of faith; and Psalms 74:16-17, for the same end, are a recognition of him as Creator and general ruler of the worlds. At Psalms 74:18 the direct prayer is resumed, and with humble pathos continued to the end.

TITLE:

Maschil of Asaph A fitting title for a lesson of instruction, the most serious of any to which the nation had ever been called to listen. Its Asaphic origin appears, not only in its didactic style, but “in the contemplation of Israel as a flock, and the predilection for retrospective references to Israel’s early history.” Delitzsch.