a stream (including the sea · noun, common feminine plural construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 20:11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and t…
Exodus 17:5-6 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the r…
Joshua 3:13-17 And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall r…
Psalms 105:41 He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river.
Isaiah 48:21 And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, a…
Joshua 2:10 For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of t…
Isaiah 44:27 That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:
Exodus 14:21-22 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 74:12-17
The lamenting church fastens upon something here which she calls to mind, and therefore hath she hope (as Lam 3:21), with which she encourages herself and silences her own complaints. Two things quiet the minds of those that are here sorrowing for the solemn assembly: -
I. That God is the God of Israel, a God in covenant with his people (Psa 74:12): God is my King of old. This comes in both as a plea in prayer to God (Psa 44:4, thou art my King, O God!) and as a prop to their own faith and hope, to encourage themselves to expect deliverance, considering the days of old, Psa 77:5. The church speaks as a complex body, the same in every age, and therefore calls God, "My King, my King of old,"…
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood,.... That is, the rocks at Horeb and at Kadesh, from whence water flowed as out of a fountain, and became a flood, whereby the people of Israel were supplied with water in the wilderness, and also their beasts; and from this instance it may be concluded that God will not leave his people, nor suffer them to want, but will supply all their need while they are in the wilderness, and will open fountains and rivers for them, Isaiah 41:17 he himself is a fountain of living water; Christ is the fountain of gardens, and the Spirit and his grace a well of living water springing up unto everlasting life:
thou driedst up mighty rivers; the river of Jordan,…
Psalm 74:13-17
13. Thou hast divided the sea by thy [229] power: thou hast broken the heads of the dragons [230] upon the waters. 14. Thou hast broken the head [231] of Leviathan [232] in pieces, and hast given him for food to thy people in the wilderness. 15. Thou hast cleaved [or divided] the fountain and the torrent: thou hast dried up mighty rivers. 16. The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast ordained [233] the light [234] and the sun. 17. Thou hast set [or fixed] all the boundaries of the earth: thou hast made the summer and the winter.
13. Thou hast divided the sea by thy power. The prophet now collects together certain kinds of deliverances highly worthy of remembrance;…
The Church Fathers
"You have dried up the rivers of Etham" [Psalm 74:15]....What is Etham? For the word is Hebrew. What is Etham interpreted? Strong, stout. Who is this strong and stout one, whose rivers God dries up? Who but that very dragon? For "no one enters into the house of a strong man that he may spoil his vessels, unless first he shall have bound fast the strong man." [Mark 12:29] This is that strong man on his own virtue relying, and forsaking God: this is that strong man, who says, "I will set my seat by the north, and I will be like the Most High." [Isaiah 14:13] Out of that very cup of perverse strength he has given man to drink. Strong they willed to be, who thought that they would be Gods by means of the forbidden food. Adam became strong, over whom was reproachfully said, "Behold, Adam has become like one of us." [Genesis 3:22] ...As though they were strong, "to the righteousness of God they have not been made subject." [Romans 10:3] Observe ye that a man has put out of the way his own strength, and remained weak, needy, standing afar off, not daring even to raise his eyes to Heaven; but smiting his breast, and saying, "O Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." [Luke 18:13] Now he is weak, now he confesses his weakness, he is not strong: dry land he is, be he watered with fountains and torrents. They are as yet strong who rely on their own virtue. Be their rivers dried up, let there be no advancement in the doctrines of the Gentiles, of wizards, of astrologers, of magic arts: for dried up are the rivers of the strong man: "You have dried up the rivers of Etham." Let there dry up that doctrine; let minds be flooded with the Gospel of truth.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Fountains And Springs · Created by God — Created by God
Jordan, The River · Passage of Israel over: Alluded to — Passage of Israel over: Alluded to
Rivers · Some of: Great and mighty — Some of: Great and mighty
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
With this prayer for the destruction of the enemies by God's interposition closes the first half of the Psalm, which has for its subject-matter the crying contradiction between the present state of things and God's relationship to Israel. The poet now draws comfort by looking back into the time when God as Israel's King unfolded the rich fulness of His salvation everywhere upon the earth, where Israel's existence was imperilled. בּקרב הארץ, not only within the circumference of the Holy Land, but, e.g., also within that of Egypt (Exo 8:18-22). The poet has Egypt directly in his mind, for there now follows first of all a glance at the historical (Psa 74:13-15), and then at the natural displays…
springs and streams to gush forth: God provided water in the desert for his people (see 68:8-9; Exod 17:6); he dried up the Red Sea (Exod 14:21) and the Jordan River (Josh 3:17).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 74:12-23
Having spread the sad case before the Lord, the pleader now urges another series of arguments for divine help. He reasons from the Lord's former wonders of grace, and his deeds of power, imploring a repetition of the same divine works.
