Bible Commentaries
Psalms 74

Verses 1-23

This is a great complaint, but it is a complaint of faith. Hardly a gleam of light is found throughout. The singer sits in the midst of national desolation and pours out his soul to God in passionate appeal for His help, and protest against His silence and inactivity. This is not the son of an atheist, but the wail of a believer. He has a past experience of God's power and a present conviction thereof. The signs of that power are in day and night, in summer and winter. The one place from which He seems to be absent is the place of His people's distress. The ground of the singer's plea is not the distress of these people finally. It is rather that the enemy reproaches the name of Jehovah and blasphemes it.

In that central complaint the name Jehovah, which is ever suggestive of the essential Helper, emerges, and there only, in the psalm. The master consciousness of the moment is of God the Mighty One, but there is that deeper knowledge of Him as the Helper of the needy. Again, we are thankful that such a psalm has a place here, for it is so true to much human experience. When the heart is hot and restless, and it seems as though God had forsaken His own, he is a wise man who turns to God in song, even though the song be only a complaint.