a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
night
לָ֑יְלָהLa.ye.lah
H3915
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
prepared
הֲ֝כִינ֗וֹתָha.khi.No.ta
H3559
properly · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular
light
מָא֥וֹרma.'or
H3974
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
sun
וָשָֽׁמֶשׁva.Sha.mesh
H8121
the sun · conjunction + noun, common both genders singular absolute
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
Genesis 1:3-5 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Psalms 136:7-9 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain o…
Genesis 1:14-18 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for season…
Psalms 104:19 He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.
Psalms 19:1-6 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Psalms 8:3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
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,"…
The day is thine, and the night also is thine,.... He made the one and the other, and divided the one from the other; and can make them longer or shorter, clear or cloudy, as he pleases: and the day of prosperity and night of adversity are at his disposal; all the times of his people and of his church are in his hands; sometimes it is a night of darkness, deadness, sleepiness, and security, as it now is; ere long there will be no more night, but bright day; the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven fold as the light of seven days; and this is to be expected from him whose is the day and the night also, Revelation 21:25. Jarchi interprets th…
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
A brother asked one of the hermits, 'If I happen to over-sleep, and am late for the hour of prayer, I am ashamed that others will hear me praying so late, and so I become reluctant to keep the rule of prayer.' He said, 'If ever you oversleep in the morning, get up when you wake, shut the door and the windows, and say your psalms. For it is written, "The day is thine and the night is thine" (Ps. 74:16). God is glorified whatever time it is.'
"Your own is the day and Your own is the night" [Psalm 74:16]. Who is ignorant of this, seeing that He has Himself made all these things; for by the Word were made all things? [John 1:3] To that very One Himself who has wrought Salvation in the midst of the earth, to Him is said, "Your own is the night." Something here we ought to perceive which belongs to that very Salvation which He has wrought in the midst of the earth. "Your own is the day." Who are these? The spiritual. "And Your own is the night." Who are these? The carnal...."You have made perfect sun and moon:" the sun, spiritual men, the moon, carnal men. As yet carnal he is, may he not be forsaken, and may he too be made perfect. The sun, as it were a wise man: the moon, as it were an unwise man: You have not however forsaken. For thus it is written, "A wise man endures as the sun, but a foolish man as the moon is changed." [Sirach 27:11] What then? Because the sun endures, that is, because the wise man endures as the sun, a foolish man is changed like the moon, is one as yet carnal, as yet unwise, to be forsaken? And where is that which has been said by the Apostle, "To the wise and unwise a debtor I am"? [Romans 1:14]
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
Day · Made for the glory of God — Made for the glory of God
Night · Belongs to God — Belongs to God
Sun · Created — Created
Sun, The · God: Created — God: Created
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.
