Old Testament Exegetical Psalm 74 Essays - David, Ketuvim, Psalms

Old Testament Exegetical: Psalm 74 Old Testament Exegetical Paper: Psalm 74 For my Old Testament exegetical paper I have chosen Psalm 74. This passage was hard for me to read because it rebukes God for letting temples and other holy places be destroyed. In this paper I hope to gain a better understanding of this chapter. I will define two terms that I find to be key to understanding this passage. Reading two commentaries on Psalm 74 I will discuss the authorship, date and place of writing, audience and purpose of this passage. The term congregation is defined by The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary as a gathering of various types. More specifically congregation is defined as the popular assembly or the Israelite religious community (Meyers 232). The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible says that congregation expresses the assembly of the people of Israel (Carey 939). Congregation is used 138 times in the Old Testament (Kohlenberger 265). I examined five other passages outside of Psalms to try to gain a better understanding of the term. All the passages I Kings 8, 2 Chronicles 5, 7, 24, and Ezra 10 use the term congregation to describe a specific group of people. Ezra 10 is the only passage that does not use congregation to describe the people of Israel. The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible defines deliver as the saving, rescuing, redeeming, or setting free of material and temporal things, but also of spiritual and eternal things (Barker 89). W. R. F. Browning uses deliverance to describe the saving of Gods people, as well as the giving over of traditions (96). In the Old Testament the word deliver or one of its derivatives is used 107 times, predominantly in Psalms (Kohlenberger 319). I read Genesis 32, Exodus 3, Deuteronomy 32, Amos 6, and Micah 5 to find out how the term is used in other passages throughout the Bible. In Genesis 32 Jacob uses deliver as a plea. He says, Deliver me, please, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him. God uses deliver to describe his preserving of the Israelites from Egypt in Exodus 3. However in Deuteronomy 32 God uses deliver to say that no one can be saved from his judgment. Micah 5 uses a metaphor with a young lion amongst the sheep with no one to deliver or save the sheep. God refuses to protect the inhabitants of earth from evil in Zechariah 11. Derek Kidner breaks Psalm 74 down into 5 parts. Verses 1 3 deal with the cast-off heritage, 4 8 speak of the pillaged temple, verses 9 11 convey the impenetrable silence. In verses 12 17 the ancient exploits are reviewed and 18 23 concentrate on the continuing ordeal (264). 1 O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? 2 Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell. 3 Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary. The psalm takes as its starting-point the protest of the people against their God, a protest based on their belief in their election (Weiser 518). It is faith, more than doubt, that precipitates the shower of questions which begins and ends this half of the psalm, since the real perplexity is not over the bare fact of punishment but over its apparent finality. Is it for ever?yet how can it be when this is thy pasturethy congregationthy heritage (Kidner 265)? With the sanctuaries in ruin, the enemy laying siege to the land of the Israelites they question their faith in Gods promises in verses 1 3. Verses 4 8 show the destruction and violation of the sanctuaries of God. 4 Your foes have roared within your holy place; they set up their emblems there. 5 At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. 6 And then, with hatchets and hammer, they smashed all its carved work. 7 They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing